[kagamine]

Don't want to nit-pick but,

>gray text on web pages (even despite it violates W3C accessibility recommendations),

the W3C don't recommend against grey text at all, they recommend that designers consider the contrast of text colour versus background colour, and to not use light grey on white. It's a matter of contrast and not a blanket rule.

I do think it is important that we don't start making new silly rules about dos and don'ts in web-design.

[avodonosov]

Contrast, you're right. And also, there are good examples of gray (low contrast) texts - some auxiliary elements.

But when the main text - e.g. an article body - is published in low contrast so that I need to inspect HTML and disable the color to be able to read it, such cases make me sad :(((

:)

[kagamine]

I hear you, disable colour, ctrl+, ctrl+, ctrl+. OK, now I can read this!

[smoe]

I'm way too lazy for that, I simply close a page as soon as anything interferes with my reading experience. Whether it is small, low contrast text, survey or region selection popups seconds after initial page load, text jumping once the over sized inane stock photo in the header is finally downloaded, etc.

If the information contained is of any importance it will show up in a readable form somewhere eventually.

[mc808]

For me it's usually ctrl-, ctrl-, ctrl-. I'd like to read more than 20 lines of text before scrolling. That's why I don't still use CGA.

[avodonosov]

Exactly!

[FilterSweep]

Great comment, and on that note, WAVE accessibility has a very handy tool to check for your contrast, I've used for almost every website I designed. You can find it here:

http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/