How do I Set and Use Block Scanning on an ECO2?
Customizable Block Scanning
In the Access Method Menu, select the Modify Scan Pattern Key. 
The top left quarter of the page show the Preview Screen. When you hit the button marked Preview at the bottom left, you’ll see a real-time preview of what the current scan looks like.
| See how the Preview Screen shows the actual Core/page you are using. If you change to a different overlay or Page, that’s what you see. |
Just below the preview is a box that shows each step in a scan pattern.
In this instance, the first scan starts at Row 1 Column 1 and highlights a single row and 10 columns. The next step is to move to Row 2 Column 1 and highlight one row and 10 columns. This happens all the way through to Row 6. This is a typical single switch row/column scan pattern
However, you can easily edit this in a number of ways. First, use the up and down arrows to move the yellow highlighting through the list. As you do this, you’ll see the red highlighting in the Preview Mode moving too. When you reach the specific item you wish to modify, leave the highlighting on it.
You can use the Move Up key to shift a highlighted scan block upwards. Similarly, using the Move Down shifts a block down the list.
Delete Current Block
These three functions let you do some simple editing. However, you can do much more sophisticated editing by using the Make New Scan Pattern key.
Make New Scan Pattern 
When you select this key, you are shown the full-screen overlay you are planning to scan and the following message appears at the top of the screen:
If I now select Row 2 Column 1 followed by Row 4 Column 2, a box appears around all the pronoun keys.
Now I select Row 2 Column 4 and Row 1 Column 7, and all the Closed Class words are highlighted.
I can then go on outlining blocks of keys until I have selected ALL the keys I want to scan through.
When I’m finished, I simply hit the text area to go back to the scan modification screen. Now you see the list of all the scannable blocks.
Look how our first block starts at Row 2 Column 1 but highlights 4 Rows and 2 Columns. And if you want to change the order of the scans, you can use the up and down arrow to move between scan blocks, then the Move Up and Move Down keys to determine which block goes where. The scan starts from the top of the list and goes down.
Copy Pattern From Another Page
Another way of setting up a scan pattern is to use the Copy Pattern From Another Page key. This lets you use a specific pattern over and over again, based on the pattern used from a pre-designed layout.
Scan Pattern Order
Another way to modify the scan pattern is to set the order in which the keys, text area, and word prediction window are scanned.
Using the three toggle keys, Scan Keys, Scan Word Pred. List, and Scan Text Area.
The settings are interdependent so if you change Scan Keys to THIRD, the Scan Text Area setting would change to FIRST. So in the example above, the scan first highlights the Core and Activity keys, stepping through each assigned block, then it highlights the word prediction window and, if activated, scan through the list, and finally it highlights the text window, which speaks all if selected.
Block Scanning In Visual Scenes
One of the more powerful uses of customizable block scanning is with visual scenes. Because each scene is likely to contain different key elements in a variety of positions, you might want to scan each specific element rather than use a regular row/column approach.
For example, in the scene below of a farmyard, you can create a scan pattern that highlights individual items.
You can now scan through each item in turn, or change the scan order by using the list.
And remember, each block here corresponds to an item: Row 3, Column 1 – 2 Rows, 3 Columns is “barn,” Row 5, Column 2 – 2 Rows, 1 Column is “farmer,” and so on.
Scanning Block Within Blocks
One other feature of the customizable block scan is that you can also scan blocks within blocks. To illustrate, let’s take another look at our Farmyard scene.
I have outlined “barn,” “farmer’s wife,” and “house.” But then I can outline “sky” as follows:
Notice how the block also includes all of “barn” and “house” along with part of “farmer’s wife.” However, the scan will outline each in turn so when the barn alone is highlighted, you can say “barn,” but when the sky area is highlighted, you can say “sky.”
Treat Block As....
There is one more feature to point out and that is the option to treat a scannable block as either a block or a key. The difference is based on what exactly a “block” is. Technically, it is a group of keys that can be scanned as a whole but then scanned within the block. So if you have defined a block of pronouns like this;
Your scan will highlight it as such, but then when you hit the switch to select, the scan will operate as row/column, column/row, or linear within the block, depending on your scan setting.
Now, you can also use the following setting;
The default of BLOCK means that if you select the block, you will scan within it to specific keys, but if you switch to SINGLE KEY, is means that when you hit the block, it acts as a large, single key and does whatever is stored in the top-right location.
This is how we can scan blocks within blocks in visual scenes. Technically, in the example above, we have the word “sky” programmed at Row 1 Column 1. Similarly, “barn” is stored at Row 3 Column 1, “house” at Row 4 Column 13, and “farmer’s wife” at Row 4 Column 11.
As well as being able to use “regular” scan patterns, the ECO software now allows for a client to create their own scan pattern based on user-definable blocks. This is what we mean by Customized Block Scanning. Simply put, you can scan any keys in any order, and even have different patterns for individual pages. Let’s look in detail at one example. In this case, we’ll use the simple 1 Switch Auto Scan Row/Column.