Life has moved online during the coronavirus pandemic, and access to the internet has shone a new light on America’s inequality crisis.

Nearly 15% of American households do not have a home internet subscription, including dial-up, broadband or a cellular data plan, according to US Census estimates from 2018. For low-income earners, that percentage is more than double the national average.

A Pew Research study published last June discovered a link between household income and home broadband services, as well as access disparities between people of different races and education levels.

Lower-income Americans without internet access can often find it at their offices, schools and libraries. But those have been shuttered during the pandemic. Many people are struggling to get online, including children attending school virtually and people who want to access their state’s unemployment filing system online.

House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled their latest Covid-19 stimulus bill, which includes $5.5 billion to help expand home internet access, a move experts say is key to mitigating the immediate accessibility issues. However, the provision in the bill probably won’t be a long term fix, which is needed as coronavirus accelerates schools’ and companies’ shifts to digital.

“It took this pandemic for people to realize that tens of millions of people don’t have [an] internet connection,” said Gigi Sohn, distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy and former senior staffer at the Federal Communications Commission.

Experts say further investments in internet infrastructure and federal funding programs are needed to change the structural failures that created the current inequality.

More at CNN.