The downside of the opacity is that 1) the contrast between the text & background in those areas is reduced, and 2) people won't necessarily know to hover over

The downside of the opacity is that 1) the contrast between the text & background in those areas is reduced, and 2) people won't necessarily know to hover over those areas to increase the contrast. I personally don't think the hover color is too bold, but the current opacity is really overdoing it. "Want to learn to Program" is particularly problematic, and should be about as dark as the text below it. I'd also recommend playing around with the line-height and measure, see: http://webtypography.net/toc/ http://webtypography.net/toc/