I can tell you from experience that you don't want to lose that! I had to use mine with just the transparent buttons, and when I was heeled the wrong way, I had to take them all out and put the centre one in to press OK every time.
I just taped it in, never found a solution, all of them were more
money than I liked.
It's why I hate Raymarine, even though everything I have is Raymarine... I am currently today cutting up my new Quantum2
radar cable so I can use it with my two Axioms, and still steaming that they won't control my
autopilot properly, simply because Raymarine chose to remove that
SOFTWARE feature - it is
software after all...
Anyhoo... Rant over... Sorry, got carried away.
Good Luck!