Acer ES1-132 Touchpad bottom left and right button not working

starLED

Member
Acer ES1-132 Touchpad bottom left and right button (that can be clicked, not tapped) are not detected in Windows or Linux (tried both to exclude driver issue). Moving the mouse and tapping is working fine.

I have disassembled the touchpad, but I am puzzled how it actually works.

There is a clickable button in the bottom middle of the assembly, and when you press bottom left/right on touchpad it actually just clicks that one middle button.
How does touchpad actually detects left/right button?
And how to diagnose the issue? It seems there is some overcoat on the button, and multimeter leads can't show continuity.

 
I suspect there is a detent in the corner is a drop in DC resistance while the touch sense I believe is a rise in capacitance or drop in AC impedance.

Be careful not to create more failures.
 
I don't know if it matters, but touchpad had a shiny layer that is not anymore over the buttons in the bottom, it's just in the middle as you can see it on the image.
Can this be a reason for not detecting buttons?

 
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