The connection between Prentke Romich Company (PRC) and Semantic Compaction Systems (SCS) is one rooted in friendship and common goals. Barry Romich recalls that he first met Bruce Baker at a conference in the late 1970s where Bruce explained the Minspeak® System to him as a way of increasing the speed of communication for individuals who were using early forms of AAC. Barry acknowledged that at the time, he didn’t fully appreciate the potential of Minspeak; thankfully the story doesn’t stop there, since it resulted in meeting again two years later.
This next time, the potential of Minspeak and relevance to Barry’s new company were mutually apparent. The two AAC pioneers soon began collaborating in pursuit of their common goal of serving those with communication disabilities. In 1981, PRC began working with Baker to develop Minspeak Application Programs for AAC devices such as the TouchTalker and LightTalker. Fifteen years later, Unity® would be developed based on these Minspeak principles, including focus on core language, icon prediction, use of multi-meaning symbols, and development of automaticity.
For decades after this historic meeting, Bruce’s company, Semantic Compaction Systems (SCS), and Barry’s company Prentke Romich Company (PRC), now PRC-Saltillo, worked closely together to develop and market Minspeak, and other Minspeak application programs all across the globe, including: Unity® LAMP Words for Life®, UNIDAD® (for Spanish speakers), CoreScanner®, and Quasselkiste (for German speakers).
In the wake of Bruce Baker’s passing in 2020, PRC-Saltillo, in collaboration with SCS, has taken on the responsibility of continuing the important work of developing and protecting Minspeak, and all Minspeak vocabulary systems, in order to support their use among the tens of thousands of AAC communicators around the world.
SCS continues to offer introductory through expert-level training for clinicians wishing to increase their proficiency in using Minspeak vocabulary systems. Their 3-day virtual seminar, for example, features hands-on, practical study of the fundamentals of Minspeak and covers a variety of key AAC and language-focused topics.
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Bruce Baker
Semantic Compaction System
PRC-Saltillo