I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I’m still technically in the grading dungeon (grades are due in 21 hours!)… but the annual press release from Apple highlighting new features in MacOS 16 and iPadOS/iOS 19 is worth some time to discuss. Some of the new features will appeal to a wide…
Read More Apple’s 2025 Accessibility Press ReleaseAs I’m teaching four classes this semester, something I haven’t done for a while, I figured it was time to up my organizational game just a little… and give website readers a sense of how I organize my classes along with the tools I use. Tools: What Goes With Me Into the Classroom As my…
Read More Setting up classes for a new semester: My processThe 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 InterestingIn 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?One 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 DisciplineEndNote 21 has a nice new feature where tags can be added to any reference. There are some peculiarities with tags, though, which is why I consider them a beta feature. I’ll mention here what I’d like to see changed, but even though tags are in their early stages, there are some legitimate use cases…
Read More EndNote 21: Tags vs GroupsMost readers of this site won’t have heard of Craig Hockenberry. But you may have heard of one of the apps his company, Iconfactory, was known for: Twitterific. Craig has a really smart piece about accessibility and how even Apple has made some mistakes in the new WatchOS 10 timer app. Spoiler alert: he even…
Read More Why accessibility matters – how the user interface and timers interactAn accessibility rant courtesy of my Faculty Focus email So who doesn’t want a syllabus that students will actually read and use throughout the semester? I think most professors — whether creative or not-so-creative, or those who see themselves primarily as teachers and those who don’t — hate to get the questions that are already…
Read More Want a cool syllabus that’s accessible…It feels like it’s a one-sided relationship between you two… I’m hoping that you both will work with me here. Parallels really wanted me to install Windows 11. And if you look at the Parallels website, it says that I can. As I mention elsewhere on this site, I have a mid-2015 MacBook Pro. But…
Read More Dear Microsoft and Parallels,