Editing Boards: Caregiver Mode

Everything you can customise sits behind a parental gate, out of reach of small fingers. Here's a tour.

Getting in

Tap the gear icon in the message bar and pass the parental gate, a maths problem by default. You can switch to a harder multiplication problem or a 4-digit PIN in Settings → Accessibility. Passing the gate opens the board editor directly.

The board editor

The editing tools sit right on the board itself. Tap any cell to edit it: change the label, symbol, colour, or add a custom pronunciation. Tap an empty cell to add a new word. Press and hold any tile to drag it to a new spot. The toolbar along the top holds Add, Find (search every board at once), and Select (hide or remove several words together); everything else, including all settings, lives behind Manage.

Adding a new board

Use Add → New Category to create a themed sub-board, such as one for a specific activity, room, or topic. You can also choose Visual Scene to turn a real photo (a bedroom, playground, kitchen) into a board with tappable hotspots instead of a grid.

See the Visual Scene Displays guide for how to add hotspots and when a scene works better than a grid.

Everything else lives under Manage

The Manage button is where the rest of the app's tools live:

• Settings, for language, voice, layout, backup, and accessibility
• Board Pack, in Settings → Layout & Display, to switch the whole vocabulary set (SpeakPad previews the new home board and backs up your current boards automatically before switching)
• Share Board, to export the board you're viewing as a .speakpad file for a teacher or therapist
• Modeling Mode, to demonstrate language on the board without it speaking aloud
• Print Board and Saved Messages, to keep a paper copy of any board and to manage stored phrases
• Switch or Manage Profiles, in Settings, so each child gets their own boards, voice, and settings

Modeling without pressure

Modeling Mode turns off speech on tap, so you can show your child how to build a message without talking over them. Turn it on from Manage, tap words the way you'd want your child to, and tap Exit when you're done.

Anything not covered here, from Switch Scanning to importing boards from another AAC app, is in the full FAQ.