[amarshall]

Huh? The foreground is #404040 and background is #F9F9F9. That’s 9.84:1 which is high enough for WCAG AAA. The background image is speckled, but even the lowest-brightness pixel is #E8F7FA which is 4.72:1, which is not AAA, but is AA.

[three14]

I didn't notice the contrast problem until seeing the GP comment, but I suspect that speckled backgrounds are worse than a solid #E8F7FA because they mess with people's ability to do edge detection when trying to see the shapes of the letters in the text.

[klapatsibalo]

What are these ratios and the letter sequences?

[lifthrasiir]

Ratios are contrast ratios [1] while letter sequences are WCAG 2.0 conformance levels (AAA is the highest).

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#contrast-ratiodef