"Appropriate accessible name or description" wording is misleading

[baldino-m]

Both Labels or instructions and Headings and Labels Understanding pages have a paragraph (not exactly the same but very similar) close to the end of the "Intent" section:

• From Labels or instructions

Further, this success criterion does not take into consideration whether or not alternative methods of providing an accessible name or description for form controls and inputs has been used — that aspect is covered separately by 4.1.2: Name, Role and Value. It is possible for controls and inputs to have an appropriate accessible name or description (e.g. using aria-label="...") and therefore pass Success Criterion 4.1.2, but to still fail this success criterion (if the labels or instructions aren't presented to all users, not just those using assistive technologies).

• From Headings and Labels

Further, in the case of labels, this success criterion does not take into consideration whether or not alternative methods of providing an accessible name for form controls and inputs have been used — that aspect is covered separately by 4.1.2: Name, Role and Value. It is possible for controls and inputs to have an appropriate accessible name (e.g. using aria-label="…") and therefore pass Success Criterion 4.1.2, but to still fail this success criterion (if the label is inaccurate or insufficiently clear or descriptive).

In this context, I believe that the wording is misleading: "appropriate" here sounds like "meaningful" (at least to me); if so, having an "appropriate" accessible name is not necessary to pass SC 4.1.2, since any accessible name will do. Input fields with an inappropriate/non-meaningful accessible name represent a SC 1.1.1 failure.

I believe removing "appropriate" will work just fine; or it can be replaced with "properly implemented/coded/provided/programmatically determined" or similar (not so sure about it...what is an example of a non-properly provided accessible name? It is either programmatically determined or not).

Very likely, the intent of this paragraph is not to take into account any meaningfulness (1.1.1 potential issue).