How to change font-color for disabled input?

You can't for Internet Explorer.

See this comment I wrote on a related topic:

There doesn't seem to be a good way, see: How to change color of disabled html controls in IE8 using css - you can set the input to readonly instead, but that has other consequences (such as with readonly, the input will be sent to the server on submit, but with disabled, it won't be): http://jsfiddle.net/wCFBw/40

Also, see: Changing font colour in Textboxes in IE which are disabled

You can:

input[type="text"][disabled] {
   color: red;
}

input[disabled], input[disabled]:hover { background-color:#444; }

The following gets you pretty close in IE8 and works in other browsers too.

In your html:

<input type="text" 
       readonly="readonly"    <!-- disallow editting -->
       onfocus="this.blur();" <!-- prevent focus -->
       tabindex="-1"          <!-- disallow tabbing -->
       class="disabledInput"  <!-- change the color with CSS -->
       />

In your CSS:

.disabledInput {
    color: black;
}

In IE8, there is a slight amount of border color change on hover. Some CSS for input.disabledInput:hover could probably take care of this.