Mfcttrf

I am travelling with a totally blind diabetic, and a cooler full of beverages (soda). Most of the beverages are diet, but a couple have sugar to treat low blood sugar. The blind person must be able to search in the cooler and find a sugar soda without assistance.

How can the beverage cans be marked so that a totally blind user will be able find one that contains sugar?

Just a simple thought: you could use a little piece of string tied to the hole in the tab to mark the odd ones out (that's less work than marking 90% of the cans). Like this (it's Friday afternoon, so I have no soda can available):

There are many good answers here. I'd use that old lifehacks fallback: duct tape. Just wrap a band of duct tape around the middle of every soda that includes sugar. It will be an easy, tactile way to identify cans containing sugar.

Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) for an insulin dependent diabetes is a medical emergency, consuming sugar is a matter of life and death.

The cans containing sugar should be marked, if the marking comes off, accidentally consuming a sugar beverage instead of diet, is much less life threatening

Place a rubber band around the center of the sugar soda cans. It holds up well submerged in melted ice. It can be reused multiple times. It is very easy to feel. A larger rubber band can circle a can a couple of times. Occasionally they do break so make sure there are always a couple of them in the cooler.

Buy drinks with sugar in a non-can format. If there's a bunch of cans, plus 2 plastic bottles, that's easily distinguishable.

What this avoids is having to try each can in turn to see if it has a rubber band or string or whatever. The instant you grab something, it's obvious if it's a can or bottle, which is important when you're having a medical emergency, are blind, and need to plunge your hand into icy water to check each one. It also avoids various failure modes where the marker falls off or breaks. No matter what happens, a plastic bottle is not going to turn into an aluminum can.

Note that these are usually a different size. (20oz vs 12oz.) There are 12oz bottles for sale, though you might need to try a couple stores.

Ideally, you'd use a device that can make Braille labels. As an alternative, there are devices that make embossed labels - but you'd have to agree on what encoding to use (e.g. 3 dots for drinks with sugar, one dot for no sugar).

This answer is based on two already given but too much for just a comment.

Mark all cans (as given in @Glorfindels answer) but use different kind of string for with and without sugar. Cotton against wool will already do.

Add a tag to the end of the (short) string, many kinds of plastic can be cut into usable tags. You only need a way to tie the string to it.

Many kinds of plastic will allow you to add some braille to it, a few characters at least and if you hit the right kind of plastic maybe enough to write the whole name of the drink. (This part is based on @Hobbes answer.)

To make it easy for the seeing users of the cooler, use different colours for the string as well. Like red wool for sugar containing drinks and white cotton for those without, so when picking out a drink for your companion, you can see immediately which category you catch.

if the cans come in a linked 6-pack, cut up the "linker" that ties them together and leave it on the ones you wish to mark.

Or, bend the pull tab partway up on the ones you wish to mark.

when planning for emergencies try to make the protocol very easy (were the ones with a thread sugar free or with sugar?) ...

Some totally crazy ideas:

• get two coolers! one for the blind person close to them, so it is easy to find.




• all of you drink sugary drinks, no confusion, all are happy (sugar replacements are allegedly cancer inducing anyway)




• get another source of sugar that is easily digested (have no experience, dextrose maybe?)




• mixing up some answers: attach a metal or plastic braille plate with duct tape to each can (you can reuse them on the next trip)




• cable zip ties could help too instead of a string.




• contact beverage manufactures to include braille code in the can, like you have on medicine boxes. It could be on the bottom, top or walls. non-blind people might even start reading braille if they are exposed all the time.