The vaccine rollout shows that expanding internet access is a matter of life or death

The pandemic has highlighted the digital divide, especially among children across the U.S. forced to learn remotely — and the vaccine rollout is putting an even brighter spotlight on the number of Americans without internet access.

Many elderly, low-income people and communities of color aren’t getting appointments because cities require them to register online, according to Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution.

“What we’re seeing in the vaccination rollout is similar to what we saw with the breakdowns of providing remote learning to school-aged students,” she said, “where we as a country are just not fully prepared to migrate our government services to an all digital platform.”

It’s not a small problem. According to Gigi Sohn, distinguished fellow at Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, tens of millions of Americans don’t have broadband access because they can’t afford it.

More at Yahoo Finance