Jargon and specialized notation is sometimes cryptic as an unintentional side effect of communicating efficiently between specialists. To suggest they should communicate findings in a less efficient way that's understandable by laymen who haven't put in the effort to learn the jargon / notation is silly.

But I think Bret's point isn't that every research paper should be as verbose as an introductory textbook, but rather that interactive widgets can express ideas which text and static images in published papers can't.