Optimization of the Emergency Evacuation Sign's Color Cognition for Users with Color Vision Deficiency

Abstract: Color has the characteristics of fast reading and fast recognition, with this reason, information in environments needs color to help fast communication, especially in the situation of emergency evacuation. The colour and graphic symbols on emergency evacuation signs(EES) help direct people to safety and provide emergency information quickly.(Barry Gray. 2012)But according to statistics, about 8% of the world population are suffered by color vision deficiency（CVD）. While they are not resolved all colors, just easy to confuse some color. Today, different countries or organizations have different standard for EES, and many research shows, the color recognition of EES still has the phenomenon of uneven benefits of different groups of people, which means there are significant differences in the color recognition efficiency of EES between CVD and normal vision groups, especially deuteranomalous vision group (G, Landini, G. Perryer.2009).While the appropriate color selection can substantially improve CVD groups’ color recognition and at the same time not affecting the normal users’ color recognition rate. Therefore, to explore appropriate EES color design optimization for the CVD population has the social and scientific significance.With this background, this research intends to study the EES color recognition of CVD people and try to build optimize EES color model for this group of users. The research start with different selections of EES color standard among countries and organizations. Through the comparison of these standard colors, some color samples are sorted out with the help of the recognition models of CVD people. Then totally 57 CVD people participated the research as experimental volunteers to test the recognition of selected samples. The final ranking of samples were influenced by both the color hue and also the color lightness contrast between EES background and the icon or text. The objective of the research is to build a more inclusive practical color model for improving EES and other safety sign design. The result of this research could assist color design optimization and help the EES design to select appropriate color, without affecting the recognition rate of normal color vision people, while greatly improving the recognition of CVD group. The research conforms to the design thinking of universal design, inclusive design and human-centred design. The results could be used to optimize or review EES and other signage color design, could also apply to other visual information communication field.

Keywords: colour cognition, emergency evacuation, colour vision deficiency, inclusive design

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001607

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