Only read this today, but I completely agree.
Ryan Kaldari wrote:
> I've noticed that the majority of designs I've seen from the design
> team in the past year have featured light grey text (frequently
> #CCCCCC) on a white background. Although I understand the need to make
> non-essential text less prominent, having text that is barely or not
> at all readable to a large percentage of the population seems like a
> bad idea. One of the main differences between designing for Wikipedia
> and designing for other sites is that Wikipedia strongly values
> accessibility. I know that the design team is very conscious of
> color-blindness in its designs, but poor vision in general is a much
> more common problem and should arguably be given more consideration
> than color-blindness.
>
> Personally, I would suggest that we avoid using light grey on white
> text or grey on grey text and try to maintain a minimum level of text
> contrast. If that doesn't seem realistic, I would at least like to see
> us avoid low-contrast text at small font sizes. What are other
> people's thoughts on this?
>
> Ryan Kaldari