The various eulogies are up on the internet now that Bruce Bastain, the original programmer and co-founder of what was then WordPerfect Corporation, has died. Many people my age remember WordStar and WordPerfect as the first two word processing programs we used. While I was not a WordStar groupie, I definitely was a WordPerfect one.…
Read More An ode to WordPerfectI’m writing from the point of view of a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies, not as an Apple fanboy.[1]Trust me: my wallet does not like the price I’d have to pay for the MacBook Pro I want to replace my mid-2015 model! The memory upgrade prices are way too steep in my opinion. Why…
Read More iOS 18 Accessibility Features Look InterestingAs Peanuts and Apple fans know, there’s a new special that gives the backstory of Franklin: Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin.[1]I’m not sure why Apple has to put the “Snoopy Presents” subtitle on the show, but that’s a whole another story… It should be noted here that there are two different kinds of storylines that…
Read More Stepping into a racial and comic minefield…If one reads a few Apple blogs, it seems like all the “cool kids” have their $3500+ setup for the Vision Pro. But I wondered what the experience would be like for someone who has very little vision. Shelly Brisbin, a noted accessibility specialist who has forgotten more about Apple and accessibility than I’ve ever…
Read More Accessibility and the Vision ProIn other words: Did I waste a lot of time? I don’t think the project I described in a previous post was a waste of time at all — there are two ways in which I think of the project: The mere act of going through the abstracts pointed out to me the articles that…
Read More Followup: Why bother to have abstracts for all my journal articles?I believe this to be true, but don’t take my word for it… the National Bureau of Economic Research just published a study that found that double majoring is good for future careers and career earnings. Here’s the abstract: We study how human capital diversification, in the form of double majoring, affects the response of…
Read More Polymaths are protected from economic shocksOne of the complaints that my students hear from their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) friends is that communication is such an “easy” discipline. In the first week or two of my Communication Theory and Theory and Research classes, we pretty quickly work on refuting that notion. We talk about how even the “simplest”…
Read More Polymaths and the Communication Discipline