Grey text is one of the silliest trend I have seen.
If you've changed the background from white to light-grey, that's enough. Stop changing text from black to dark-grey (especially the non-bold text)!
If you've changed the background from white to light-grey, that's enough. Stop changing text from black to dark-grey (especially the non-bold text)!
When this is additionally compounded with a non-standard super thin font, the result is text almost invisible, even when zoomed, at least on non-retina non-macs.
I also noticed some (very few, but not that rare) websites use a font that looks completely rubbish on my Windows machines (certain serifs not being displayed, making it impossible to decipher letters). I thought it was impossible that every Windows user had this, they would have learnt. Turned out my ClearType settings hugely affected the rendering of mentioned font (ClearType is antialiasing method on Windows, when you enable it, it goes through manual calibration process, hence every Windows machine may have radically different config)
Don't go wild with colors and fonts for main content of the page. The more standard ones you use, the better chance it will render well for every user. Not everyone has same device with same config as yours.
This is why the ADA happened.
No, but given the way that the web and browsers are designed, along with the way that my site is designed the option is there for people that want to take it. Again, should I have to provide a link to a spoken version of my website in case somebody who is blind doesn't have a screen reader installed?
ADA is about making things accessible. So long as somebody can, with reasonable accommodation, access my website (for example, my design being simple and trivially overridable with user styles) then I'm accessible. If someone with dyslexia cannot handle the contrast levels of my site because a small minority of dyslexic users have their dyslexia triggered by that amount of contract then that is precisely what user style sheets are for, and I don't think it's unreasonable to ask somebody who is a minority of a minority to use the tools that are provided implicitly for them to configure things in a way that is easier for them.
It's true that modern devices, particularly mobiles, emit too much light. I always set device/monitor brightness to very low. Additionally I use f.lux/twilight to shift colors slightly towards red. When the page is black on white, I can adjust brightness enough to not bother me too much.
But when the page is gray on gray thin font, the only way to read the text is to enable custom stylesheet that changes font to black Georgia. Easy on desktop, not so easy on mobile.
Please make an effort in your own work to respect those in the world with dyslexia, colorblindness (never use red/green for status without another visual indicator, an overwhelmingly common sin that I'd wager 80% of those reading have done at some point), full blindness, and many other disabilities that can affect those who use your software. If your organization doesn't have accessibility guidelines, it should write some; there are a lot to start from online. You can (and should) also run your software through accessibility tools to help.
Hard black, #000000, is a modern thing and itself the trend. Typography has never in history been hard black until Web pages started just throwing 'black' on 'white' down without understanding color and color physiology. Hard black, all zeroes, is even outside of generally usable color in television; almost all broadcast equipment stays in the 16-255 range and relegates 0-15 for superblack purposes. Notice you can tell when a TV is on? That's why, and there are numerous technical reasons for even that.
Black is the goal in the case of printed text, and should be the goal on a screen too.