Accessibility-First AI: Building Glucolily for the Eli Lilly Hackathon

Glucolily started as a 48-hour build and ended as an Eli Lilly Code for All semi-finalist. The brief I gave myself: design as if the primary user has low vision and shaky hands, then make the AI keep up.

Multi-modal input, by necessity

Text, audio, photo. A user logging lunch should be able to snap the plate, dictate the carbs, or type — whichever is easiest in the moment. The fine-tuned agent unifies all three into the same structured log.

Accessibility is a feature set, not a checkbox

Adaptive font sizing tied to system preferences

Contrast modes designed for diabetic retinopathy

One-tap doctor report generator

Emergency alerts that bypass the chat UI entirely

Designing for the edge of the user base usually makes the centre of it happier too.