Marundhu (MedMinder)

Inspiration

In many Tamil Nadu homes an elderly parent takes 4-8 tablets a day for sugar, BP, thyroid and cholesterol, while their children live in another city. The "system" is a plastic pill box, a paper strip on the fridge and a nightly phone call: "Amma, did you take the night tablet?" Most reminder apps are English-only, use small text, name pills by brands the elder can't read, and treat the caregiver as an afterthought. We wanted something a 72-year-old with reading glasses and a slight tremor could use without help, in her own language.

What it does

Marundhu (மருந்து, "medicine" in Tamil) is a bilingual web app with two views of the same schedule:

• Welcome + guided demo: a three-picture story and two doors, "Try as Kamala Paati" (the elder) or "Try as Arun, her son". A coach card walks you through the real controls and waits for you to actually do each step.
• Onboarding: language first (Tamil leads), who uses the phone, and text size with a live preview.
• Elder Today view: a "Next medicine" focus card, then Morning / Afternoon / Night groups. Every dose shows a drawing of the actual pill (shape + colour, with the colour named in words), what it is for in plain words ("for sugar"), before/after food, and one huge "I took it" button. A confirm-by-picture step ("Is this the tablet in your hand?") prevents mix-ups, and every action can be undone.
• Read aloud: a speaker on every card and "read today aloud", in Tamil when the phone has a Tamil voice.
• Caregiver view: today and 7-day adherence, a "Needs attention" list (missed doses, low stock), an insight such as "most missed doses are at night", an accessible week grid, a WhatsApp-ready summary, and a bilingual pharmacy refill list.
• Add-medicine wizard: one question per step: name → looks → when → food → supply → review.
• Settings: 3 text sizes, light / dark / high-contrast / match phone, reading speed, JSON backup and restore.

Everything stays on the device (no account, no server) and works offline as a PWA. All people and records in the demo are fictional.

How we built it

React 18 API on Preact (via preact/compat, to keep the bundle small) with TypeScript and Vite. State is one reducer persisted to localStorage; all ~190 strings live in an English/Tamil dictionary. Every icon, pill illustration, story picture and the kolam motif is original inline SVG - no icon library. Fonts: Atkinson Hyperlegible (designed by the Braille Institute for low-vision readers) and Noto Sans Tamil, bundled via Fontsource. A service worker caches the app for offline use. Accessibility is checked automatically with axe-core in Playwright across 16 app states. Hosted on GitHub Pages.

AI disclosure: this project was built with substantial help from an AI assistant (code, copy and Tamil strings were drafted with AI and then reviewed and tested), as the hackathon rules allow.

Challenges we ran into

• Making Tamil work at large sizes: long Tamil words overflow narrow screens, so line height, wrapping and layout had to be tuned per language.
• Never relying on colour alone: pill colours are named in words, statuses use icon + word, and the week grid uses ✓ / ✕ / clock symbols plus screen-reader text.
• Designing a guided tour that teaches without trapping focus or blocking the real UI.
• Read-aloud depends on which voices the phone has, so we show a clear message when no Tamil voice is available.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• 0 axe-core WCAG 2.1 A/AA violations across all tested states, plus 48px+ touch targets, a 76px main button, keyboard support, reduced-motion and forced-colours support.
• Identifying pills by how they look ("the small yellow round one at night") instead of by brand name.
• A caregiver view that turns ticks into an action ("call her around 8:30 pm").
• A complete, private, offline app with no backend.

What we learned

Designing for elders is mostly about removing things: one decision per screen, forgiving undo everywhere, and plain words. Localisation is design, not translation - the time-of-day framing (காலை / மதியம் / இரவு) matched how families already talk about tablets far better than clock alarms.

What's next for Marundhu

• Testing with real elders and caregivers, plus TalkBack and VoiceOver.
• Native-speaker review of all Tamil text, then Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam.
• Reminder notifications and optional, end-to-end-encrypted sync between the elder's and caregiver's phones.
• Support for multiple elders per caregiver.

Credits

Fonts: Atkinson Hyperlegible (© Braille Institute of America) and Noto Sans Tamil (© The Noto Project Authors), SIL Open Font License 1.1, via Fontsource. Icons and illustrations: original work for this project. Libraries: Preact, React types, Vite, TypeScript; Playwright and axe-core for testing. Not medical advice.

Built With

• axe-core
• css3
• github
• html5
• localstorage
• playwright
• preact
• pwa
• react
• service-worker
• typescript
• vite
• web-speech-api