05. Digital pen

The software starts in the design mode. In this mode, all drawing functions are available. Using the ‘Drawing tools’ menu or the TactileView digital pen, you can start drawing by selecting one of the drawing tools.
To explore a diagram with speech and sound, the program needs to be switched to explore mode. This is done using the context menu in design mode or using the hotkey Ctrl+E. As long as the software is in explore mode, the design cannot be adjusted.

Combined with the TactiPad, the digital pen can be used to create a tactile diagram in the TactileView software. To do this, the pen has to be assigned to one of the drawing tool functions, just like the mouse would. When a drawing tool is activated, it can be used to make a digital drawing.
The option ‘Drawing tools’ in the context menu of the design mode gives access to all the tools. Every drawing tool is made to achieve specific results, such as drawing a line or square, placing a text label and more. These are placed as so called objects in the diagram.
Tactile recognizable points or a tactile diagram on the TactiPad can be used as a reference for easy drawing. The results are described by spoken messages.

Every drawing tool has a number of options, by which the drawing tool can be adjusted via a context menu. For example, when drawing a line, one can choose the line thickness and style. It is virtually impossible to draw a steady thick dotted line by hand with the pen; instead, the software can easily create this by defining a starting and ending point and providing the line in between with the desired properties.
When an object is placed with the drawing tools, one can always adjust this object later on via the context menu of the used drawing tool or object.

Tactile diagrams that have been made with the TactileView software can be enriched with audio-information, so that the diagram becomes an audio-tactile diagram. This diagram needs to be placed on the TactileView ClickPad or the TactiPad, so that the physical position you click on matches with the position in the corresponding file. The pen is used to indicate the location, and the software then automatically checks in the matching file if there is audio information available at this position. After a short click, the audio is played.
To be able to hear the audio information, the software needs to operate in the explore mode.
Once more, a long click in the explore mode opens a context menu. In this menu, various options can be chosen that are of importance for exploring the diagram, like opening the digital file matching a different tactile diagram, selecting a text to speech voice or calibrating the TactileView digital pen.