When ever there are discussions about accessibility there are always voices calling for "moderation" ... does every building really need a ramp? why does every single restaurant need an accessible bathroom? do those people really need all that contrast?

Yes, billion to one. Or at least like 1000:1, which todays monitor easily achieves. Whatever maximum contrast value of whatever monitor I look atm is OK, anything lower is not (including OLEDs). I don't get why we should be "forced" to look at #aaa text on #eee background "contrasting" text. For me, even #222 is "too much", to the point I usually notice something is off and then Imma mess with inspector and fix colors, which is annoying, takes my time, and wastes CPU cycles, especially when one tries to use some plugin to fix this automatically. The extension is usually CPU hog, so the "low contrasting text websites" are actually harmful to society much like needlessly JSheavy sites.

I was, in fact, making a cheap shot at how hn decreases the contrast on downvoted comments.

I apologize for any intelligent discussion I may have caused.

There's actually a book that studies this by measuring readability of print articles by seeing how far readers got: Type and Layout by Colin Wheildon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1875750223/

The research upheld the "any color as long as its black" popular wisdom for text, but found that black text on a ~15% tinted background (any color) did not impede readability. (Deeper background tints impeded readability.)

> Why is your monitor's maximum contrast the right value?

Please give me maximum contrast and let me adjust my monitor.

A billion to one sounds reasonable to me. Now if only I could find a reasonably sized OLED panel...