Text that is larger and has wider character strokes is easier to read at lower contrast. The contrast requirement for larger text is therefore lower. This allows authors to use a wider range of color choices for large text, which is helpful for design of pages, particularly titles. 18 point text or 14 point bold text is judged to be large enough to require a lower contrast ratio. (See The American Printing House for the Blind Guidelines for Large Printing and The Library of Congress Guidelines for Large Print). "18 point" and "bold" can both have different meanings in different fonts but, except for very thin or unusual fonts, they should be sufficient. Since there are so many different fonts, the general measures are used and a note regarding fancy or thin fonts is included.Note 3: The actual size of the character that a user sees is dependent both on the author-defined size and the user's display or user-agent settings. For many mainstream body text fonts, 14 and 18 point is roughly equivalent to 1.2 and 1.5 em or to 120% or 150% of the default size for body text (assuming that the body font is 100%), but authors would need to check this for the particular fonts in use. When fonts are defined in relative units, the actual point size is calculated by the user agent for display. The point size should be obtained from the user agent, or calculated based on font metrics as the user agent does, when evaluating this success criterion. Users who have low vision would be responsible for choosing appropriate settings.
from WCAG 2.0 Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.3 [Contrast (Minimum)].
NOTE: As the default font size for the body text of this page is 1em. Large text will have a minimum size >= 1.2em bold or >= 1.5em
This text at 1.2em is considered as small text, contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 required.
This text at 1.2em bold is considered as large text, contrast ratio of at least 3:1 required.
This text at 1.5em is considered as large text contrast ratio of at least 3:1 required.