+1 on the low contrast comment. It's all the rage nowadays, but this one of those trends that I think people will look back on in a few years and say, "How did anyone ever think that was a good idea?"
There are also some WCAG guidelines on contrast.
Here are some contrast checkers: http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ http://www.checkmycolours.com/
If anything should be questioned in hindsight, it should be why so many managers and executives allowed designers to seriously submit such bad ideas for consideration, never mind allowing such unusable designs to actually be implemented.