Text contrast multiplies with the monitor contrast, which then multiplies again with eyesight quality. The high contrast requirement is to make it readable for someone with poor eyesight on a low-quality monitor...

Which then makes it downright painful for someone with regular eyesight, who sets their monitor to high contrast to improve photo rendering. Grey-on-grey is the only website design that doesn't make me immediately back away.

It's very high contrast. The comment meta on these posts fail it. I'm pretty any text against the orange in this site fails it too.