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Contrast Question for 1.4.3

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From: Peter Quale
Date: Jan 18, 2018 9:27AM

Apologies if this is covered in the list archives, but I did some searching
and can find nothing there, nor any concrete information in Google searches.

When a style sheet uses relative bold weights like 300, 500, 700, is there
a good number to assume a "medium bold" font is bold enough to only require
a 3 to 1 contrast? Of course, many thin fonts will never be bold enough,
but assuming we're using a typical monospace, solid font. Can one generally
assume 500 is officially bold and anything less is not bold?

I feel like I read a method of analyzing the area of a font and deciding
whether the surface of each letter sufficiently stands out from the
background. But I might have just dreamed that.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions to the list!

-Peter Quale