Two of my best coworkers are blind. They're ops people, so their job is computers. I don't think anyone can tell any difference in productivity between them and sighted people. I was surprised, initially, because I thought that it would be hard to work without the high-bandwidth data transfer medium that is vision, but apparently they make it work beautifully.
Also, it has shown me how hard I make their lives when I don't design with accessibility in mind. I didn't use to think that anyone with vision problems used the internet much, but it turns out not only they do, but they do the exact same things I do. This is a good tool for accommodating visually impaired people:
They even preserved the all caps. Now when vision impaired people search for their screen reader, they get results for a javascript framework, since they're both in the context of software as far as a search engine is concerned.
I always design with accessibility in mind, but I feel like there are more visceral complications than having to add a little extra context to a web search.
Almost everyone in development has encountered unfortunate name collisions that make what you're looking for hard to find... it's a pretty common inconvenience. Usually you just refine the query, like: "JAWS screenreader." The first result takes you where you probably intended to go, and it's at most 1-2 keystrokes away.
I think the real lesson here is to design inclusively. HTML has a lot of handy attributes to augment content; knowing & implementing the essentials means someone can follow the core flow of your site/application without relying on visual cues. And for the pragmatists... it has the added benefit of self-documenting and increasing semantic conformity in your markup.
I don't see how this problem is related to vision at all. Besides, why would someone need to google JAWS all the time? It's a software you install once. It's such a trivial issue compared to the accessibility problem on websites.
I remember going over some html I had written in person with one of those coworkers. I had forgotten to write alt text for an image, and the filename itself was some ugly hex string or something. When he got to that part of the page the screen reader starting reading off the filename - it sounded like it was speaking tongues! His nose scrunched up and he shook his head disapprovingly: no, no no! After hearing that cacophony myself, I now try to remember to make things as accessible as possible.
Vision is not particularly high-bandwidth. It just creates the impression of high-bandwidth because it is directed. You only take in a tiny fraction of what's around you, but because you can direct your attention at arbitrary things and refine your impression of them, it feels like you are seeing a very rich picture. You're actually just drawing your own very personal path through a very rich scene that you can only see a tiny piece of at a time, and, like OP you are filling in most of the details from your imagination.
There are things around you which are plain as day, but which you will never see, because you will never think to look at them.
But the amount of information gleaned from vision is immense. Maybe not in the transfer of light to the eye, but the derived and concluded information from the resultant images is huge. Especially when your vision brings up loads of related memories and context from other/previous experiences... (I realize my vocabulary is lacking to the point I can't fully articulate this particular thought as clearly as I would hope)
But I'd like to know if you're diffentiating between the actual bandwidth of the eye's ability to see light (I.e. Peripheral vision is fairly narrow) vs the amount of thought and memory that can be induced in the mind based on the (limited) amount of light/images/info coming in through the vision.
I am not blind, but I do have terrible floaters and other eyesight issues as a consequence of my medical condition. I suspect many handicapped people spend more time online than average. I certainly do and have for many years. Online banking and a million other things make my life far more manageable than it would be without the Internet in the face of a serious handicap.
> I guess I'm saying don't be a jerk, be mindful of sight-impaired people when designing your products.
At a job I had five years back, new US government standards for handicapped accessibility came down, and I was asked pretty explicitly to do the absolute minimum necessary to make our web app technically comply with the letter of the rule. This essentially amounted to adding one- or two-word alt-text tags to image buttons, and nothing else. I wasn't happy with that, and I investigated to see if I could do better, but really doing it right would have taken weeks or months of work and a lot of inter-department cooperation, and I was just a contractor and the decision had been made many levels above me, so ultimately I had to do what was asked and move on to my next task. :(
So I guess my point is, don't assume that just having accessibility standards is enough, when there are people in the pipeline who view them as an annoyance. Whether you're a manager or a low-level dev, do what you can--more than I did--to make your coworkers understand that this stuff actually matters.
I was on a team designing a mobile app and we sometimes had confusing conversations with the project-manager, at some point he told us he was partially color-blind. Specifically in this image: http://i.imgur.com/jJIWv9X.jpg , all three pics look exactly the same to him. This app was basically a monitoring app using the well-known traffic colors of green=OK, orange/yellow=UhOhWarning, red=BigProblemHere.
That incident made us take extra care in designing the app such that we never conveyed info solely with the colors.
WCAG 2.0 guidelines were basically intended for web use, but I find them a good guide for developing retry much any visual interface. The problem you mention would be a single-A level fail under section 1.4.1: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contr...
I had to test accessibility software compatibility with the application I work on, and man, it was an eye opener. I decided to try to do some basic tasks using it, and the closest analogy I could come up with was trying to do productivity work through a phone menu.
I had to listen very carefully for the things I was interested in, and then slowly navigate my way through the UI tree. If my mind wandered I became totally lost.
In first two years of college, only one student cared to stop the teacher, it was the blind guy. I don't want to be positively discriminating, but it seems being blind forces you to be sharp and focused in everything (I'm almost envious).
I'd love to discuss their perception and thoughts about everything.
I may have the gene that could cause me to go blind when I am very old. It's nice to live in a world where losing my vision in the future wouldn't be such a big problem, with all the medical improvements.
They mostly use a screen reader, I think it's a proprietary one that is the current best. One also has a braille display that is insanely expensive (multiple thousands of dollars IIRC), but he almost never uses it.
They also use iPhones, as they complain that Android's accessibility is bad. I thought it was just the typical "I like what I'm used to", until I tried to use it on mine to help one of my coworkers with it, and he was right. It was unusable (taps wouldn't register, gestures wouldn't register, they were hard to do, etc). I was ready to throw my damn phone in the trash after ten minutes, I can't imagine having to use a phone like that all day.
As a Type I diabetic for — what is it now — 21 years, stories like this make my heart race.
I simultaneously admire the author's fortitude and am hit by powerful worry and frustration that facing the non-stop challenges of T1D for so many years can result in such outcomes — and often as a result of one's own imperfections facing those challenges.
The guilt the author describes when realizing she'd go blind had to be unbearable. Man I hope to work hard enough and be lucky enough to not face that.
Not diabetic here, but with progressing myopic retinopathy of unclear aetiology. There is mostly random common sense advice on how to prolong one's retina usefulness, which different doctors mention different pieces of, but the unfortunate and exasperating part is the surprising lack of research. E.g. we still don't know what makes our eyeballs grow or stop, and there's been about two or three original attempts at investigating it (only one with humans last I checked).
On the other hand, we do have ample research that disproves or undermines most of the common sense advice (e.g. eye rest every hour, eye exercise, keeping fit, etc). Conflicting schools of traditional medicine do not help as well: you could get the opposite opinion on laser treatment (for retina) and scleroplasty depending on whether the specialist is from the US or Europe.
My hope is platforms like HealthKit will enable massive new research into this. Alternatively, cyber-eyes.
T1D here too, echoing your sentiments. It's a terrifying reality to face. Perhaps foolish to say but I think I'd rather lose all of my limbs (another fun possibility for diabetics) before I lose my vision. Huge respect to the author.
As someone with a medical condition that may result in severe if not total paralysis at some point (the damage is already pretty bad and it could get a whole lot worse) I agree.
I pretty much have accepted that even if I do all the sensible things I might still end up in a wheelchair but the thought of losing my sight is still far more terrifying.
As an aside, apart from the obvious "Keep a close watch on your glucose levels, take your insulin regularly, and do a glycosylated hemoglobin test every year or two" – are there any other things that diabetics can do to proactively ward off the chances of these happening?
Always attend scheduled eye exams -- all Type 1 diabetics (in the UK, where I am) are given diabetic retinopathy screenings annually, regardless of when they were diagnosed (it's rare for retinopathy to occur in those who've been diagnosed for under 5 years). They're really important, as retinopathy caught in its early stages is much easier to treat and treatment is usually more effective.
There's some evidence excessive alcohol consumption is associated with higher-than-normal incidences of diabetic retinopathy, though I've read studies that say there's no effect if alcohol consumption is moderate. Some studies say cannabis has a preventive effect.
You could try a low fat whole foods plant based diet to lower your risks. There has been research done for Type 2 Diabetes where this has helped reverse the disorder, and it helps in Type 1 too (although there's no cure for Type 1). See http://www.pcrm.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/health/Type-1-d...
Even if you don't believe this, just give it a try for a month along with your regular monitoring and insulin intake.
Uhm, there is also some studies on high-protein, low-carbohydrates diets, that is also giving good results for glycaemic control for type-1 diabetics.
And a lot of angry arguments and shouting too from people with various levels of expertise.
I know almost nothing on the topic, but my guess is that the key is to have a stable and low intake of slow carbohydrates, avoid fast carbohydrates, but most importantly - you should actually like the food so that you can stick to the diet.
I can't vouch for either of these either way (i.e. do your own research):
But I've heard of people keeping an even closer watch than typical. Continuous monitoring and pump to try to keep the glucose levels very even - the way they are for a non-diabetic.
Also some people try to keep glucose levels somewhat lower than recommended under the assumption that the spikes cause harm, so starting with a lower baseline is better. (Of course don't overdo it.)
Down-vote me if this is inappropriate, but I'm actually working with a start-up at the moment that's attempting to make managing diabetes a bit less of a headache and possibly even an enjoyable and enlightening task:
It's a tough challenge and we hear all sorts of stories about problems that arise when people stop properly self-managing for whatever reason.
And I've worked on other healthcare projects and it really does seem like simple compliance -- getting people to do what they've been medically advised to do -- is a huge problem. Like, there are diseases and medical issues that are mostly solved. Except for patient compliance.
As a mostly blind father, not due to diabetes, with a son that has type 1 -- this really hit close to home. I was diagnosed at 16 with retinitis pigmentosa, or RP for short. I am now 33 and have very little sight left, will probably be totally blind in the next ten years. I won't lie, it's been a struggle. The author of this piece describes the experience very well. But like her, I've been able to be a productive software engineer for the past 15 years and hope to continue.
For those who can't imagine anything worse than losing your sight, I can assure you that you're wrong. It's no picnic, but I can imagine much worse predicaments. Not having to look at yourself in the mirror anymore can actually be liberating.
Frankly, the toughest part about being blind is the stigma around it. I've lost jobs because my blindness made people uncomfortable. I've been turned away from job interviews because the interviewer didn't think I could do the job without giving me a chance to prove otherwise. Most people are great about it and are very empathetic. But there's still the occasional person who avoids me like the plague.
As for my type 1 son, I hope I provide enough of a dose of reality for him to stay on top of his blood sugar.
>But there's still the occasional person who avoids me like the plague.
It's hard for me to believe this, but I don't want to believe you.
>For those who can't imagine anything worse than losing your sight
I don't think it would be the worst, but I have trouble writing code as it is; don't kid yourself, you're a bad ass.
>Not having to look at yourself in the mirror anymore can actually be liberating.
I solved this by ignoring the mirror while in the bathroom even though I can see. It just seems to cause vanity.
As for your son, I wish you the best. I had a type 1 roommate in college, and he had some 'interesting' episodes that caused me great concern (i.e. failing to maintain awareness of his glucose levels). Keeping active skiing, hiking, and fishing seemed to help him a bunch.
It seems a long time since - if ever - I read anything touching on accessibility on the web with anything genuinely positive to say.
I know it's a hard, complex set of problems, but it really does seem that everyone essentially concludes "well, we're not there yet", and that's a real shame.
Frustrating that companies like Pandora refuse to support basic accessibility features like dynamic type on iOS. It's a feature that probably costs 1 hour of development time. They know about it, and won't even put it on the backlog.
As a software developer, this article scared the shit out of me. One of my biggest fears in life is losing my sight because of the challenges that would be presented being blind.
Honestly going blind is a fear for me for everything (never seeing my family or my SO smile again, or the rain, etc.) except programming. It would be hard but things like Emacspeak really make me feel like someone's taking care of the hypothetical vision-impaired me that could happen. It wouldn't be peachy but I wouldn't feel suddenly lost either.
My biggest fear for my job is injuring my hands irreparably as they are really my bread and butter as a programmer. I invest heavily in quality keyboards and personal tracking software (mostly self-written) to keep tabs on not going overboard and triggering the onset of RSI or other health issues related to the hand and wrist.
Emacspeak is a great project! For something more lightweight, take a look at speakup http://www.linux-speakup.org/ What quality keyboard are you using? Microsoft Sculpt ergo? You can also invest in learning the Braille alphabet by using braille stickers on your keyboard and switch to a braille font.
I don't know if this helps, but there is something much worse -
Locked-in syndrome - A medical condition in which the body (and most of the facial muscles) are completely paralyzed but consciousness remains. Only the ability to perform certain eye movements is preserved.
It happens suddenly, so imagine laying there screaming inside and no one can hear you.
Your comment reads of "Hey, you think you have it rough? Imagine THIS kind of life! This would be FAR worse! Look how insignificant your troubles are in comparison!"
One-upmanship like this never helps others feel better.
One of the best programmers I know is nearly blind. He can see, a little, with the aid of a telescope-like affair that is mounted to a pair of glasses.
But the breadth and depth of his understanding of computers and software is amazing, and the code that he writes is some of the best I've seen: Very clear, very direct and unsullied by useless abstraction, and easy to maintain.
Naturally I can't answer your question about the specific person the GP was talking about, but FWIW, blind programmers are working productively in all popular languages (and some less popular ones too). Even significant whitespace, as in Python, isn't a problem, because the more full-featured screen readers can be configured to announce changes in indentation.
Accessibility of development environments and tools is another issue. For example, Xamarin Studio is totally off-limits because it uses GTK, and GTK is inaccessible on Windows and Mac.
> I wanted to know why I couldn’t work out how much food (carbohydrate) I was about to eat, measure my blood glucose, and then calculate my insulin dose based on those and other factors.
Ouch. I suppose carb ratios weren't so big back then (admittedly, it wasn't for me either, being diagnosed in the late '90s). But I still measured myself so many times a day that the pharmacist thought I was scamming the PBS for test strips somehow (our subsidized medicines scheme here in .au). As a curious teenager I was able to develop a mental picture of what my BSL did when I ate certain foods after a few months of 10+ measurements per day. So, even if I didn't have an actual carb ratio figured out, I "knew" by trial and error how much insulin different foods needed.
Even so, I've fallen off the wagon a few times. I got so used to having specialists and doctors tell me what a great job I was doing on my own, I had an embarrassingly long period between specialists. To the extent that I stayed on humulin for quite a few years longer than I otherwise would have if I'd seen a specialist (newer insulins are way faster-acting and easier to live with).
This story has certainly prompted me to re-evaluate where I am now; complacency is a silent killer.
I suffered (probably still do) from myopic retinopathy and I underwent dynamic laser treatment about 10 years ago, it was very effective and I haven't progressed since. Basically they inject you with something that has to be activated by a certain wavelength of light and by timing the injections with the laser pulses they can just burn the new blood vessels and not the retina in front of the vessels.
My mom suffered from the same ailment a few years later and it appears that the treatment of choice is now an eye injection. It seems to me that the field is moving very fast, and the author of the article has been very unlucky not to have this just a few years later. Here's to hoping that we find a stable non-invasive cure in the very near future.
It sounds like the risks of not using the medication properly weren't clearly communicated to her. "You'd better take it every day because it's important" doesn't count - people need to be able to make their own decisions about these things. The fact that she tried skipping doses as long as it didn't cause short term problems suggests nobody told her it was quietly doing irreversible damage.
I can imagine doing the same thing myself - and have often skipped prescription medicines. But if I'd been told the risks (not exaggerated unquantified risks) then I surely never would.
The tricky thing here is that really getting this message across can be hard, and the doctors/specialists involved may not have any sense whatsoever what's going on inside the head of patient sitting across from them, nodding and looking a bit bored. And looking at them and seeing a parent figure, perhaps, some greying, slightly-ridiculous authority figure who's just setting up more rules because that's how they spend their time...
I remember some of these feelings; I've had an eye condition since I was 5 that gave me 20/200 vision at one point, and included various unpleasant treatments; fortunately for many years I've just needed to take eyedrops once a day and that's sufficient.
When I left home to go to college, I needed to find a specialist somewhere near school, and see them a few times a year to be sure things were under control. Think I handled that well? Nope, not really, but (to make a long story short) I was lucky that nothing irrevocable happened as a result.
At that age, I was aware that poor decisions, even non-decisions (ignoring something that needed to be done) could have severe real-life consequences, but all that still felt unreal, and even now I sort of feel like rolling my eyes at myself for saying it. What kind of person writes phrases like "severe real-life consequences", huh?
It's an age for breaking free of constraints, and trading in external rules for internal ones (through some amount of trial & error); that's just a much more dangerous process for people (like the author at that time, and myself to a lesser extent) who are leading lives with lower error tolerances.
Thank you for sharing this, my most sincere condolences and my very best wishes to you in continuing to cope with your situation.
I am a recently diagnosed type 1 diabetic, hospitalised on my 29th birthday earlier this year. Not having received it as a child it is difficult for me to add to the post, but I do think that I can add some value by elaborating on exactly how tricky glucose monitoring and insulin dosages are.
Type 1 diabetes is uncommon in comparison to type 2 diabetes, if I remember the numbers correctly, it is about 10% of diabetics that have type 1. It is an autoimmune disease, meaning that your immune system, for some as-of-yet unknown reason, attacks your pancreas and destroys your ability to produce insulin. There is no medication or treatment other than injections of insulin into your bloodstream for the rest of your life. Personally, I had deteriorating eye sight over the course of several months and finally a very sudden urge to drink large amounts of sweet drinks and water.
As a type 1 diabetic you need to monitor your glucose level several times every day. The most common way to do so is to prick your finger and put a drop of blood on a one-use testing strip that goes with a digital monitor [1]. This is remarkably easy and you get instant results. It is however a relatively new invention and prior to this you had methods like urine test strips that gave far less immediate and accurate results. The most modern monitoring available would be continuous glucose monitors. They are essentially a needle with a sensor attached to a patch that you attach to your skin. This sensor then sends a signal to a device that you carry with you and that can warn you if your values are too high or too low. It is however not widely available in all countries, partially due to the cost.
So, about dosages, how do you do it? Well, every person is slightly different, but there are tricks. You can use the same portion size of carbohydrates every day and keep your dosages fixed, or you can attempt to guess the amount of carbohydrates and adjust the dosages accordingly. What happens if you overdose? Nothing immediate, but over the next few hours or so you will start to feel lethargic, sweating, act "drunk", and in the end loose conciousness unless you compensate by taking in additional carbohydrates. As you grow older you may loose these signals and falling too low becomes increasingly risky. What happens if you underdose? Nothing immediate, but much much less immediate than with an overdose. You will have high levels of glucose in your system which gradually will wreak havoc on your eyes, feet, kidneys, etc., there will be consequences further down the line. This is one reason why getting insurance coverage as a type 1 diabetic is almost futile as pretty much anything could arguably be caused by your diabetes.
To add to all of this your dosages will vary due to what kind of food you are eating, carbohydrates from chocolate acts slower than pure sugar due to it being coated in fat that slows down the digestion. If you are sick your body is likely to be much more difficult to read and your dosages may change radically. Add to this that your immune system is significantly weaker as a type 1 diabetic. Dosages also vary depending on whether or not you do physical exercise, your stress levels, and more.
I really want a book describing all of this to me from the bottom up, molecular chemistry and all, so that I can better understand my own disease. For now I am gradually building a mental model from experience and picking up bits of pieces by reading.
There is hope in stem cell research and computerised systems that automatically read your glucose levels and inject an appropriate amount of insulin. But we are not there yet.
T1D for 10 years here, I'm now 20. The longer you live with T1D, the risk of getting a complication worsens.
The sad fact is you can't control it all the time, the hormonal changes, your stress levels etc. all have an impact on your glucose levels.
Especially if you are young, you want to show people that you're not a disabled person, that you can work harder and achieve the same if not better results than the others.
The immediate result of this is that your glucose levels fluctuate, your health deteriorates.
But complications are in your opinion worse consequences that could happen to you. You are adjusted to seeing blurry, feeling dizzy, vomiting, losing weight from time to time. You generally feel sick. You can cope with that, but having a permanent disability, like going blind, losing a foot... You suspect things, but ignore them because you don't want to face reality, you know that something is wrong but you think you can handle it, because you've been feeling sick all your life.
The doctors do know what complications may arise, but living with T1D, they have no clue. You always need to be conscious of lows, aware of highs. After a point, if you're a teen you just ignore it. Low blood sugar can kill you immediately, but highs, you can live with them.
My best advice would be: eating less carbs, getting blood tests and eye examinations regularly and hoping for the best. I wish I had the willpower to follow these all the time.
> This is one reason why getting insurance coverage as a type 1 diabetic is almost futile as pretty much anything could arguably be caused by your diabetes.
Do you mean that insurance won't cover things related to type 1 diabetes?
The insurance company will exempt itself from anything that could be caused by your type 1 diabetes, there are many of them [1], regardless of how well you keep your levels under control. I understand their position as treatment costs are very high, but that does not make it easier to be on the receiving end.
"I really want a book describing all of this to me from the bottom up, molecular chemistry and all, so that I can better understand my own disease. For now I am gradually building a mental model from experience and picking up bits of pieces by reading."
I want to reach out to you regarding what you've said. Mind hitting me back?! chensteven[at]outlook[dot]com
Sure, I will try to get around to it later today. Not sure why we can't discuss it here though, I can't think of any aspect of a book conversation that would be necessary to keep private.
There's a lot of awesome work being done on T1 diabetes, particularly in the open source community. I highly recommend checking out the Tidepool Project (http://tidepool.org/) and The Nightscout Project (http://www.nightscout.info/).
Everyone does some version of that in their youth, I think. I did, for sure. But fortunately, my gotchas have all been relatively minor.
My vision is deteriorating, though. However, it's mostly cataracts and lens hardening. So I'll get artificial lenses, and probably won't need glasses anymore. Or I might end up blind, if something/someone screws up.
Contract surgery is pretty routine these days, fortunately. Be careful about who's doing the surgery, double-check that they're inserting the right type & power of lens, etc. (mistakes are rare, but it's worth double-checking everything you can) and manage your post-op care very carefully, but that's about reducing risks that are small to begin with; it's pretty safe -- especially if you're not dealing with more fragile eyes due to existing conditions (my case) or advanced age.
But if you do have issues to work around -- e.g., problems with the original capsule holding the natural lens, or other inflammation/etc. to avoid, there are even now a handful of different ways to attach an artificial lens that also work well; I have artificial lens in the original capsule, and the other that basically clipped onto the iris.
You'll probably need glasses anyway (for standard artificial lenses, you will) but possibly only for reading.
I use progressive lenses in my glasses (no more bifocals, these days); and generally reading, driving, etc. are just fine -- I don't think about it.
As a type 1 diabetic, I am mostly frustrated with the lack of common knowledge about the differences between the two. Now and then I may rant that maybe it would have been better to call them disease A and B so that searching for advice would be easier for us that are in minority. But, not even once have I felt that "we" deserve more of the research money, both diseases are terrible and causes significant human suffering. The savings in healthcare that a type 2 cure could enable should also not be understated.
Can you explain why it's sad that a majority of the money is going to help the affliction that's most common? Sounds more like moral outrage than problem solving.
Millions of people suffer from diabetes type 2 who didn't eat too much. Over-eating and weight gain are major factor, but so are genetics and other conditions.
By your logic we should stop funding HIV/AIDS research as well, spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year taking care of people who didn't use protection, at the expense of people who try to be responsible.
No, my logic would not extend to people with HIV/AIDS.
Why? Because the majority of people with Type II Diabetes (not all) could cure themselves just by eating less! Instead they put a burden on our health care system so they can maintain their habit.
A person living with HIV/AIDS doesn't have the ability to cure himself with a no-cost option. There's a huge difference there.
The original claim also included the word "cure", and according to that site there is no "cure." Diet/exercise only reduce the risk of developing it in the first place.
You're getting downvoted, though you are not wrong.
Obesity is a huge problem socially, financially and systematically (look at the cost of obesity on any social healthcare system. It's staggering). Type II diabetes has a near fool proof known cure: Lose weight.
The challenge is that's hard for a huge swath of people, likely due to many factors, some self inflicted, some societal. But the bottom line is we know how to fix T2D, it's just not available in pill form.
I hope you are right. I lost 24 pounds this year. Another 15 and my weight will be in normal range. So far, no change in my diabetes but I am still losing a couple of pounds every month. If you are right, I will be cured by next year.
I say this in all honesty. If losing weight cures it I will be so thankful. The strange thing is that I have never been one to eat lots of sweets and I exercise. Many people who weigh much more than me have way better blood sugar. So is it all weight or is there something more? Personally, I wonder about environmental factors. Also now they are finding some medicines are linked to diabetes. Like Seroquel (which I took years ago) and Lipitor.
The sad truth is some people have completely wrecked their insulin sensitivity b/c of poor diet. I'm not saying you are one or not, just that diet is so critical to a healthy life and our "approved" western diet is a recipe for disaster for most people.
My wife is a GP and she deals with obesity and T2D all the time. She says 3 things for T2D.
1. Lose weight
2. Reduce your carbs, go low carb as soon as possible.
3. Exercise, preferably with weights and walking/swimming.
She personally has never had a patient that actually did the above and wasn't "cured" from T2D. However, she has had folks who think losing 5 pounds or that low carb means not drinking the 5th coke of the day and don't understand why it doesn't work in 2 weeks. She has found herself to be an educator most of all. People just generally have zero clue on how all these systems work and she has to tell folks things like "yes, rice is in fact a carb. So is an apple and those waffles. Yup, the biscuit as well. Oh, you're drinking fruit juice for breakfast thinking you are being good? That's 45g of sugar right there. That low fat yogurt is in fact awful for you as a T2D".
I don't like to recommend nutrition advise over the internet, but if you haven't looked into ketogenic diet for T2D management, I would give it a look.
Also, it has shown me how hard I make their lives when I don't design with accessibility in mind. I didn't use to think that anyone with vision problems used the internet much, but it turns out not only they do, but they do the exact same things I do. This is a good tool for accommodating visually impaired people:
https://khan.github.io/tota11y/
I guess I'm saying don't be a jerk, be mindful of sight-impaired people when designing your products.