Off-white backgrounds are better for people with perceptual differences, like dyslexia.
Bright white slide backgrounds can make text harder to read. Choose an off-white or cream background. Text should be dark, with lots of space around the letters. A dark background and white text also work.
Pastel colors such as peach, orange, yellow or blue are also suitable. Avoid green, red and pink backgrounds for text as these will be difficult for people with color deficiencies to read. Text headings should be at least 20% larger than normal text to help make them more distinctive.
For people with dyslexia, total contrast — white text on a black background, or vice-versa — can be difficult to read. Many dark themes use total contrast.
Avoid red and green combinations. Approximately 5% of people cannot distinguish between red and green. Avoid blue and yellow combinations.
Coloured overlays, also known as tinted overlays, are thin sheets of coloured plastic that can be placed over text to help improve reading.
We have shown that simple treatments such as viewing text through blue or yellow coloured filters, musical training or eating oily fish, really can help children to learn to read.
Have you wondered if colored lenses or overlays could help your child with dyslexia? The quick answer is no. But keep reading to see if colored overlays might still help your struggling reader.
This syndrome has been hypothesized as sensitivity to frequencies of the light spectrum that causes visual stress (Hoyt 1990). Colored overlays are claimed to alleviate visual stress and improve symptoms commonly related to dyslexia such as low reading rate, accuracy, and comprehension (Evans et al.
Printing on coloured paper
Some individuals may request materials on coloured paper. Most will have a preferred paper colour, which may not be yellow. Users with dyslexia, other specific learning difficulties or visual impairments are most likely to find materials printed onto coloured paper helpful.
White backgrounds: Simple and classic, black text on a white background provides the highest readability ratio. Blues and grays also provide the right contrast and thus work well on white backgrounds. However, avoid using white backgrounds for an entire webpage, which can strain the eyes.
Red is a colour that people with dyslexia are probably intimately familiar with. It's the colour of the pen that's commonly used to highlight spelling mistakes and low marks in school; it's the colour a fail mark comes up in; it's a colour that generally means stop- stay where you are - don't progress or go forward.
Color overlays help people with visual processing difficulties to read by filtering out offensive light waves. This allows the brain to process visual information more accurately.
Dyslexie font is a typeface – specially designed for people with dyslexia – which enhances the ease of reading and comprehension. Want to discover it for yourself? Get started immediately after registration. Sign up for the free to use products or become a Dyslexie font “lifetime” member.
The results show that using certain background colors have a significant impact on people with and without dyslexia. Warm background colors, Peach, Orange and Yellow, significantly improved reading performance over cool background colors, Blue, Blue Grey and Green.
Taken together, these results suggested that the green filter improved reading performance in children with dyslexia because the filter most likely facilitated cortical activity and decreased visual distortions.
So, no, colored overlays and lenses will not help someone who suffers from dyslexia – technically, this is a very true statement. Third, just because color is worn as glasses does not mean that the dysfunctional anatomy it is intended to correct are the eyes.
Studies have found that students with dyslexia may benefit from using different color paper or paper overlays because it reduces stress on the eyes.
Background
Moreover, text customization suggestions broadly agree that people with dyslexia normally prefer lower brightness and color differences among text and background compared to the average reader (Bradford, 2011; Pedley 2006; British Dyslexia Association, 2012).
The 4 types of dyslexia include phonological dyslexia, surface dyslexia, rapid naming deficit, and double deficit dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disorder where the person often has difficulty reading and interpreting what they read.
How does impaired vision affect reading? Text should be printed with the highest possible contrast. There is good evidence that for many readers who are older or partially sighted, light (white or light yellow) letters on a dark (black) background are more readable than dark letters on a light background.
Their general findings were: 1) Black and white were consistently rated as the most readable; 2) Color combinations that included black were rated more readable than those that did not; and 3) Darker text on lighter backgrounds were rated higher than lighter text on darker backgrounds.
Best Practice
Sufficient color contrast should be provided (at least 4.5:1 ratio) for regular text. Black text on a white background has the highest readability. Warm and cold colors make for the best color contrast.