Handicapped people, who can not use speech or hand signs with unfamiliar communication partners, rely on aids such as pointing to letters or symbols on a board. Thus simple pointing devices can not be used as efficiently or naturally as speech or might be even impractical for everyday use. Minspeak reduces the number of symbols by use of semantic compaction . Semantic compaction is the systematic use of secondary iconicity to reduce the number of symbols in a conceptually-based selection set for the representation of natural language. This needs some more explanation.
Natural language refers to spoken languages such as English or German.
Natural languages consist of hundred of thousands words, each of which can be encoded in a sequence of characters. The set of possible characters is called the alphabet, which usually consists of 26 letters. A selection set is a set of symbols. Conceptually based symbols are symbols which encode a concept rather than representing phonetics. An example for a phonetically based system is the alphabet.