Color Contrast Requirements for Legibility of Color Symbology Displayed against Color Backgrounds

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Abstract
A Signal Detection paradigm was utilized in a symbol recognition experiment designed to determine how far apart, in CIE/UCS color space, symbol and background chromaticities must be in order for observers to reliably recognize the symbol. Hits and d' were found to increase significantly and false alarms to decrease significantly as a function of increased distance between symbol and background chromaticities. The d' measure of sensitivity was generally found to be 3.0 or greater for symbol/background chromaticity differences of 0.06 units in 1976 UCS color space. However, d' was considerably lower for symbol/background pairs for which increasing distance between symbol and background chromaticity was associated with the background chromaticity having an increasing blue component. The area of application of the research results is in the design specification of color coded symbology to be overlaid on moving map, situational awareness, displays.

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