The Effect of Text Color and Background Color on Skim Reading Webpages in Thai

Abstract

There are many sets of guidelines concerning the accessibility of the web for older adults, but little empirical evidence from studies with older people to support their recommendations. In addition, all the recommendations apply to text in languages using the Latin alphabet. This study investigated the effects of text color and background color on the performance and preferences of younger and older adults on webpages in the Thai language. There were 18 Thai younger participants (19 - 29 years) and 18 Thai older participants (59 - 70 years). There were three combinations of text color and color (black text on white background, white text on black background, and sepia text on off-white background). The text and background color combinations failed to have any significant effects on the performance measures of task completion rate or time spent skim reading webpages. However, for the preference measure, there was a significant difference between combinations of text and background color but no differences between the age groups. There was also a significant interaction between combinations of text and background color and age group. These results form an useful basis for web design guidelines for Thai websites for text and background color for both younger and older users. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.