hopefully it will become a lot less common in the next 5 years or so. accessibility laws are finally starting to spread.

Tell me about it...

I hear the lower contrast is supposed to be "easier on the eyes." Yeah, right.

I just use Dark Reader on all my browsers. It's a lot nicer to look at than regular high contrast or inverted modes.

Yes!! I absolutely cannot stand this. Like, even magnification does not help. I just end up copypasting into Word or something, if I really really need to read it. I don't want to always be in high contrast mode so it's a huge pain.

I think someone somewhere missed the memo that it’s the background you want to change and black text is fine. Nope, let’s put hard to read gray text on a painfully white background!

As someone who's not VI, I also don't like it. I feel like design in the last 30 years has been about impressing/intriguing other designers, and the needs/desires of actual users is a distant second concern.

It's the Apple-ification of everything. Design is supposed to be sleek and streamlined, not *useful*. Physical buttons for fast-forwarding? What is this, 1997? Just activate the phone, pull up the quick-menu for your podcast, and hope you can touch that little circular spot three times. Simple!

Here in Ontario, Canada, up until a few years ago they had the brilliant idea to make the paperwork for the disability support program light blue text on beige paper. They've changed it, but I'm still mad.

This drives me nuts.

“#525252”

This is the hex color code lightest gray that passes accessibility guidelines. I’m spreading the word.

Edit: to pass on a white “#FFFFFF” background.
It is charcoal gray and much easier to read than the light gray I see everywhere.

As a non blind person I freaking hate this. I have add and adhd and it's hard to focus on text in general. How the hell do you expect me to do it with text almost the same color as the page?

I feel you, plus all the crazy amount of white negative space messes with photophobia.

I absolutely loathe this, although the white I saw on bright blue the other day was physically painful to look at.

I'm currently in (early) web design studies, I have no visual impairments. I never thought about grey text being a problem for some people before. I'll definitely keep this in mind! Thanks!

It is a design fashion darling. I complain to any website that has this and that does not allow reader mode in the browser.

Out of curiosity, how do you solve this? I'm certain there's a way to just change the colour of the text, but how would you recommend doing it if I ever run into someone who needs to know?

I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I haven't seen this light gray text I guess.

Even black text on a white background can strain the eyes. Firefox read mode in dark mode really helps.