The background of the center section of Hacker News is #F6F6EF. The colour of the main text of a post is #828282, which results on a contrast ratio of 4:1 (calculated here [1]).
This is below the minimum required level to conform to the Contrast and Color Accessibility requirements of the WCAG... a pity! See [2]. The minimum contrast is recommended to be 4.5:1.
The comments (below the main post text) text colour is black (#000000) and that has good contrast - it reaches level AAA in the WCAG guidelines, which is the best rating. Unfortunately as mentioned by OP downvotes faint the colour of the text!...
It would be nice if the maintainers of the site reviewed these particular design choices at some point, to perhaps opt for something more conformant with those accessibility guidelines. Although to be honest 4:1 is not far from the minimum. Just increasing it a little would 'technically' be enough. The downvoted comments colours are another topic...
While the ridiculously low contrast of downvoted comments is a problem, let's say for a second that "you're meant to ignore it anyway, and we use low contrast to indicate it" is a reasonable idea. Then why is the main submission text lower contrast than the comments?!
I think the main text has a higher contrast than downvoted comments?… I’m mot sure, actually. If they receive lots of downvotes, their text colour becomes really pale.
Comments
The background of the center section of Hacker News is #F6F6EF. The colour of the main text of a post is #828282, which results on a contrast ratio of 4:1 (calculated here [1]).
This is below the minimum required level to conform to the Contrast and Color Accessibility requirements of the WCAG... a pity! See [2]. The minimum contrast is recommended to be 4.5:1.
The comments (below the main post text) text colour is black (#000000) and that has good contrast - it reaches level AAA in the WCAG guidelines, which is the best rating. Unfortunately as mentioned by OP downvotes faint the colour of the text!...
[1] https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/color-contrast-checker/
[2] https://webaim.org/articles/contrast/
It would be nice if the maintainers of the site reviewed these particular design choices at some point, to perhaps opt for something more conformant with those accessibility guidelines. Although to be honest 4:1 is not far from the minimum. Just increasing it a little would 'technically' be enough. The downvoted comments colours are another topic...
Accessibility is important!...
While the ridiculously low contrast of downvoted comments is a problem, let's say for a second that "you're meant to ignore it anyway, and we use low contrast to indicate it" is a reasonable idea. Then why is the main submission text lower contrast than the comments?!
I think the main text has a higher contrast than downvoted comments?… I’m mot sure, actually. If they receive lots of downvotes, their text colour becomes really pale.
I meant compared to normal comments, not compared to downvoted comments.
Ah! True…