The problem turned out to be that what ACF returns is the raw data for the fields in the form. The answer I went for was to go
apply_filters('acf_the_content', $usermeta['short_description'][0]);
(with the actual data having been read intp $usermeta[‘short_description’][0])
The other route seems to be to force the applying of filters as they are saved — I erred against this as I don’t know why ACF doesn’t do this by default.
