In Memory of Bruce Baker

Last week (5/7/2020), the world lost a man whose invention left an indelible mark on the field of AAC and on the lives of thousands of people who use AAC. With his creation of Minspeak and partnership with Barry Romich (of PRC) spanning over 40 years, Bruce Baker’s contributions to the field of AAC are enormous. We welcome guest contributor Scott Palm for an article remembering Bruce.

Remembering Bruce

Hi my name is Scott Palm. I want to tell you how Bruce Baker influenced my life. First, Bruce is the developer of Minspeak (Unity) available through Prentke Romich Company (PRC). I am sorry to say, Bruce passed away a few days ago. When I heard the news, I recalled how important Bruce has been to me. I think I have used practically every kind of AAC system there is – alphabet boards, word boards, Cannon Communicator, Memowriter, etc. Then in the early 1980’s I tried Minspeak and liked it right away. I can use only one finger for communicating, typing, etc. Thus, letter by letter spelling is pretty slow for me. With Minspeak, I could create words, phrases and sentences much more quickly. My first Minspeak system was a PRC Touchtalker which eventually included speech output. It was perfect for my college classes! In about 1985, I was asked if I wanted to go to an ISSAAC AAC conference at Disneyland. Of course, I wanted to go! There I met Bruce in the hotel lobby. Later, he came to my room to see how I was doing with Minspeak. It was a very special evening that I shall never forget. Bruce was so enthusiastic to see me using his system and so happy to see how satisfied I was. Since then I have become a consultant for several agencies and use my latest communicator which, of course, includes Unity so that I can give speeches, etc. I believe that without Minspeak (Unity) I would probably not be such a competent communicator and have so many speaking engagements which provide me much needed income.

Thank you, Bruce Baker!