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