Web 2.0

Human and machine interaction has become ubiquitous and essential. We choose to interact with diverse mechanical, electrical and electronic devices to make life easier. Our day starts with an alarm clock and probably ends with watching television. Throughout the day we use many machines; cell phones, cars, elevators etc. Whenever a user uses a machine; it involves two way communication between the machine and the user. The  user does an action, to which the machine responds in some specific manner. accordingly the user takes further action. The action and feedback loop is nothing but human machine interaction.

Imagine you are planning to have a coffee from a vending machine and none of the buttons on the machine have anything written on them. Will you be able to figure out which button does what? You come across a fancy cell phone without text or graphical labeling for buttons, will you be able to use it easily? Similarly, if you happen to fill up a form with multiple edit and selection boxes without text cues indicating purpose of any of the input controls, would the data entry be error free? Most probably it won't. Whenever and wherever there is a probability of interaction between a human and any object, labels are necessary. In my next post I will talk about labels and visual cues in context of web interface.

Shrirang Prakash Sahasrabudhe
Accessibility Specialist- SETLabs
Shrirang_s@infosys.com