Context, man, context. That site design is running Ars Digita, Philip Greenspun's original community system (http://openacs.org/), circa 1995. If I recall correctly, Greenspun helped set it up. Full disclosure: I am at least partially responsible for a few tweaks to the GUI circa 2007 (constrained the comments, added the local menus (with optional thumbnails).

Here's all the CSS for that site:

.fullwidthtable {}

.forum {color: #CC0000; font-size: 11px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 15px;}

.text { font-size: 15px; color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;}

.textsm { font-size: 14px; color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;}

.textxsm { font-size: 13px; color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;}

.link { text-decoration: none; color=#CC0000}

.link:hover { text-decoration: underline; color: #CC0000}

.belink { text-decoration: none; color=#000000}

.belink:hover { text-decoration: underline; color: #CC0000}

.taglink { margin-top: 4pt; }

It has text that can be read. What else do you need?

shoemakers' children, and all. The same complaint is regularly registered towards Jakob Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/) although it looks like his site is significantly more usable than it used to be.