It's not the text. It's the fact that when the page first appears, there's nothing but the blurred image. Our eyes immediately set to the task of focusing, which can't be accomplished.
The reason I don't believe it's not the text over a blurred image is because our eyes deal with this on a daily basis.
Any time you look at an object (like someone's face) where the background is distant, you're seeing a foreground object on a blurred background. Depending on lighting, visual acuity, and the use of glasses, the DOF of the human eye can be startlingly small (less than a foot), or it can be very large (practically infinity). It's the cognitive portion of our visual processing that makes the difference. Our brains do a great job of filtering out what we're not focused on.
My recommendation would be to ditch the animation on the HTML5 logo, tagline, and buttons. I think if you do that, this becomes a non-issue for the vast majority of people.
The reason I don't believe it's not the text over a blurred image is because our eyes deal with this on a daily basis.
Any time you look at an object (like someone's face) where the background is distant, you're seeing a foreground object on a blurred background. Depending on lighting, visual acuity, and the use of glasses, the DOF of the human eye can be startlingly small (less than a foot), or it can be very large (practically infinity). It's the cognitive portion of our visual processing that makes the difference. Our brains do a great job of filtering out what we're not focused on.
My recommendation would be to ditch the animation on the HTML5 logo, tagline, and buttons. I think if you do that, this becomes a non-issue for the vast majority of people.