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I imagine you don't know the answer, but I'm curious as to if these studies were controlled for screen glare. Dark themes/backgrounds have far worse issues wit

I imagine you don't know the answer, but I'm curious as to if these studies were controlled for screen glare. Dark themes/backgrounds have far worse issues with screen glare from badly configured room lighting than light ones do in my experience. ----- I'm also curious why another area of design that is extremely concerned with legibility seems to have reached the opposite conclusion, pretty much worldwide. Road signs. Even though signs themselves can vary widely, the standard color scheme for road signs in every developed country I can think of, is a darker background with lighter text. I certainly don't have the studies in front of me, but I know a great deal of research has gone into fonts and legibility for road signs, and I presume what we see on the roads in the world is the result.

chipotle_coyote 7y ago
You are correct, I don't know if they controlled for screen glare. :) The road signs are an interesting question. I know there's a lot of work, and occasional controversy, over the typefaces used. If I had to hazard a guess for the color choices, though, it might be the signs have to be very visible in the dark, too -- that's now generally done by using reflective paint for the light part of the sign, but older highway signs, at least in America, used reflective dots in the letters. So that might be a tradition born less out of legibility studies than practicality.