LayoutKitchen Resources

LayoutKitchen is an editor for SwitchXS Scan Panels, KeyStrokes Keyboards, and Proloquo Speech Panels. Users (or their supporters, teachers, etc.) can change the default keyboards just a little, design their own panels and construct them from scratch, or anything in between. Amongst the things that can be customised are:

• Button function – a wide variety of functions are available, varying between the three products
• Colour of the panel background
• Size and position of the buttons
• Shape of the buttons, although they must be rectangular or square
• Design of button bevels, etc. Five options including transparent button
• Colour of the button background and text
• The text or image or both displayed on each button
• … and more.

Keyboard designed by Ricky Buchanan using LayoutKitchen

Instruction Pages

• Adapt KeyStrokes Keyboards With LayoutKitchen – Ricky explains how to adapt an existing KeyStrokes keyboard with LayoutKitchen, changing key colours and adding and removing keys.
• In My Writing Method Marie-France Bru has written a wonderful tutorial about how she designed the panels she uses for SwitchXS. There’s a menu down the left hand side of the page which links to several pages on the topic.
• Layout Kitchen Button That Activates Multiple Keys explains how to set up a button that presses more than one key at once, such as command-s for the “Save” command.
• LayoutKitchen Laboratory on the Assistive Gaming website is an explanation of how to use LayoutKitchen-designed panels to attempt to make previously unplayable or difficult-to-play games playable with custom keyboards.

Free Downloads

Several people have been kind enough to donate their LayoutKitchen panels so you can download them. You can use these panels, modify them, look at them and then use the ideas to modify your own panels, and so on.

KeyStrokes Keyboards

• Ricky’s Colour Block Keyboards as described in the article Adapt KeyStrokes Keyboards With LayoutKitchen, optimised for typing and general use.
• NewJack KeyStrokes keyboards includes one board optimised for typing, one for using Logic 8 and one for Final Cut Pro, designed by NewJack Rasputin. The keyboards come with a text file explaining the specific system settings that he uses with the keyboards.
• Chat keyboard with emoticons and abbreviations by Joe Barnick.
• Extended custom keyboard with popular commands and application launch buttons also by Joe Barnick.

Proloquo Speech Panels

• None yet.

SwitchXS Scan Panels

• All-in-one SwitchXS panel – Mike Phillips designed and uses this instead of having different panels for different purposes.
• Nishant Upadhyaya has contributed two scan panels she uses:
  • AXS-Type panel for typing
  • AXS-Universal-Plus panel for general tasks

If you’ve designed a panel for yourself in LayoutKitchen, or customised a standard panel, I’d love to feature it here for others to use and learn from. Just contact me and we’ll sort something out.