I agree with you - and kleinbl00's point that it not set in stone anyway. I can't see much difference between #000/333 on #fff. #333 on #ccc is a ratio of 7.9 - which is still readable to me but anything less would start to be difficult. It's when they go even further that things start to get unreadable (again for me) and I've seen plenty of sites where the contrast is far below that. Both Apple and Google's documents are guidelines though, not rules. The quote from Apple's guidelines even says: "Strive for a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1" - that's way below 7.9 and the smaller text is subjectively starting to strain my eyes. That's just a short time scanning the page - the problem is compound when you have to read for longer - particularly with small text. Designer following Apple's guidelines are basically told to curb their creative genius and forced to struggle to get UP to that level of contrast - not use it as an absolute minimum.