The high/mid/low distinction has to do with how high the tongue is in the mouth.
That’s because the chart is meant to correspond in a very direct way with the shape of the mouth and the position of the tongue in the mouth. We classify vowels according to four pieces of information: Instead of a nice rectangle, it’s shaped like a trapezoid. We can also round our lips to make the vocal tract even longer. Remember that the difference between consonants and vowels is that consonants have some obstruction in the vocal tract, whereas, for vowels, the vocal tract is open and unobstructed, which makes vowel sounds quite sonorous. We can move the body of the tongue up and down in the mouth and move it closer to the back or front of the mouth.
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