I’m not any teenager any more, so for me most of texts on most of websites are quite hard to read, and that’s being more and more difficult by year. My vision is good, but light-gray text on light-gray background is too much.
Because nobody seems to be willing to give REAL answer to question “how to make text darker/black”, in Brave browser, based on Google Chrome I’m using APP named Darken Text, and in many cases it really help. It darkens all texts inside <p> tags.
This whole “graying” start about same time when statistics start to show that more and more elder people are using Internet, so in my opinion there was reason for biggest browser providers to change visibility, and that reason was and is “we don’t want you to see everything that happend in today’s world”.
Say whatever you want, but I can’t “see” ANY other reason. How about you ?
One stupid person thought that light grey text looked cool
then another stupid person saw it and, being like minded,
copied it and before you know it a whole bunch of stupid
people are all doing it. This will carry on until some other
stupid person starts something else equally stupid and
the mindless stupidity will continue ad infinitum.
The reason for this undesirable behaviour is known as
the ad populum fallacy.
I don’t think it’s anything to do with browser manufacturers (unless I’m misunderstanding your problem), rather the people that code the websites.
It can look aesthetically pleasing, but as you say it presents an accessibility barrier for some users.
What I do like, are sites like this one, which have a light colored theme, but which incorporate a dark mode (click on the little moon icon in the top right hand corner).
And also, please know that you are not alone. See this forum thread:
Hi. When a professional creates a website, an application, or even a flyer, he must consider the right contrast between text and backgrounds. The W3 has given guidelines in this regard, indicating the right contrast parameters for age ranges and reading difficulties. The triple AAA is the best achievable result. I hope it will be correctly implemented by all designers.
I don’t particularly recommend AAA for contrast. The AAA SC for contrast stipulates a 7:1 contrast ratio, which I think hits as many people or more than too-low contrast (too high contrast causes eye fatigue, headaches, and trouble reading esp for many dyslexics).
The links above like WebAIM and most contrast tools check for the AA level which is 4.5:1 for text.
