> It's perfectly reasonable to expect a user of the webpage to make it usable for themselves, whether that be by running it through google translate or turning on their OS's high contrast mode or whatever.
No, it isn't. By deliberately choosing terrible contrast a designer is choosing to exclude people with visual impairment. That's why accessible websites is written into law and contrast is written into best practice guidance for making a website accessible.
> Being able to read a webpage is not a universal right. It is not the onus of the webpage to make itself readable.
There's quite a few situations where accessible websites are a human right. (Eg government websites would be covered by article 21).
When you say "of course you can't read this website; you have a visual impairment" you are passing the blame. But the job of a website team - the thing they are paid for - is to provide information that's accessible to the target audience. It's not my job to read that information. I'm probably not getting paid to read the website.
And bad contrast choices aren't just hard to read for people with visual impairment. They're hard to read for someone on a different monitor or in different lighting.
> You don't demand that japanese webpages offer klingon translations when they only wish to reach a japanese audience simply because they're excluding those poor soles who prefer to read klingon, do you?
You started by saying this was not about choosing to exclude people but here you clearly show that someone has made the choice to exclude a group. The difference being that it is fine to exclude speakers of a made up language; it's not acceptable to exclude disabled people.