Level A · WCAG 2.1
2.5.3 Label in Name
The accessible name of a control contains the text shown on it, so voice control can address it by what it says.
Partly automated Some failures are detectable, others need judgement.
How it fails in practice
A button reading “Submit” with aria-label="Send form". Somebody says “click Submit” and nothing happens.
How to fix it
Start the accessible name with the visible label. Extra context goes after it, not instead of it.
At a glance
- Level
- Level A — the minimum. Failing one of these usually makes something impossible rather than merely hard.
- Principle
- Operable
- Guideline
- 2.5 Input Modalities
- Added in
- WCAG 2.1
- EN 301 549
- 9.2.5.3
- Automated check
- Partly automated
Partly automated
How far an automated check gets
A tool finds some failures here and cannot see the rest. A clean automated result means the checks that exist found nothing — not that the criterion is met. This is the gap that makes a green scan look like an accessible site, and it is where the keyboard agent, the agents still in development and a human reviewer do the remaining work.
On a crawl from an account, the words each control shows are compared with its name on every page, wherever there is visible text to compare against.
Rules that check this criterion
label-content-name-mismatchElements must have their visible text as part of their accessible name
The rule ids are axe-core’s (version 4.14.0), the open-source engine our scan runs, and our keyboard agent’s — the names a report or a CI log will show. An underlined id has a page of its own here.
Where it matters most
The guides that list it among the criteria to check first.
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
Further reading
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Accessible name
The name an element exposes to assistive technology, computed by the browser from its text content, label, alt, aria-label or aria-labelledby.
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Voice control
Operating a computer by spoken commands ("Click Send"); it works only when the visible label is part of the accessible name (WCAG 2.5.3).
Find out which criteria your site fails
We scan up to 100 pages against WCAG 2.2 AA, send the keyboard agent through the page you name and email you the report — free, once, no strings.