In the midst of the health and social crisis that is COVID-19, many things can be learned as we move forward. We are going to be taking a different look at the way we work, socialize, learn, and prioritize access to technology.

Expanding Job Markets for the Disabled

At my current job, it was part of my responsibility to get users to be able to work remotely. This was a capability typically reserved for those who worked in IT or those generating enough personal revenue to be granted access to remote access. It was also delegated by request so favorites were able to get the ability to work remotely while others were not.

COVID-19 changed all this. Now that we are trying to social distance as much as possible and get users in quarantine to prevent total market disruption, we are getting more people configured for remote access than ever before. Job roles are being altered to allow for remote access in all different kinds of ways. If someone calls in and needs something printed for pickup, procedures are being created to allow an on-site person to be able to do this. This can be said for many things that require on-site presence. If it is needed, a delegated person can handle the request but most job functions operate without changing. Why have we not been doing this to accommodate people with disabilities before now?

Some people might say that were were not more widely doing this for users because people in HR or in the hiring process did not think that we had the ability to. This takes away all illusion that they are not able to accommodate to this. Anyone being told that remote work is too much to ask for can point to this time as an example that is not true. Not just my employer is working remotely where they could not before. All kinds of industries are switching to remote work. I expect this to greatly shift what the landscape of work looks like and the accessibility for gainful employment for people with all kinds of disabilities in the future.

No Science is Enough Science for Some People

At the time of writing, people in my state will be organizing a “Reopen the State” rally tomorrow. They will be getting in mass groups to protest the state opening back up, even knowing the possible body count that can come from this. Why do they do this? They do it because they have no care for facts or the pain they cause others.

Many right-wing “news” sites, channels, and radio stations have been promoting people demand the country open back up to save the economy. They make comments about a justifiable amount of deaths to make it worth opening up the economy. They are also being told that this is a hoax and that the situation is not as bad as the media is making it even when their own communities are starting to get infected and people are dying around them. You cannot get much more closer to home than COVID-19 is right now, but they do not care. They want their political team to win. They want Republican and conservative politicians to “own the libs” because they are too tough to care about the disease.

These people will never be reasoned with when explaining climate change. They will never be reasoned with when speaking about over-policing in minority communities, a woman’s right to choose her reproductive health choices, and the massive wealth gap between the upper and lower class. It is depressing to see a generation of people refuse logic and reason in favor of political propaganda but it is happening right now and it breaks my brains internal logic.

We are Living Through a Major Historical Moment

The more this pandemic continues, the more I am aware that this will be something that goes into history books that middle schoolers and high schoolers will be reading in the not too distant future. The pictures of the food lines, the statistics of unemployment rates, and the protests to reopen the country at the cost of thousands of human lives will be documented. We will have to choose a side to say we were a part of.

Access to the Internet is a Right

Finally, so many things have moved online during this last century that we were on the cusp of needing the internet to function. I would argue we have already reached this point but this crisis really drives that point home.

No longer is the internet just a place to play games, send text messages, and write on message boards. Now it is the infrastructure on which we bank, learn (colleges and public schools), and connect to our family and friends. We use the internet to order groceries, refill prescriptions, and fill out our taxes.

Social distancing has forced us to do anything we can online. Most things to this point have had an optional online component. You could do your banking in person but you could choose to do it via Internet if you needed. Now stay at home orders are going out and people are having to stay home more than ever. They are leveraging these optional tools to perform almost every fucntion they normally would in person. Without access to the internet, a person is much disadvantaged in every aspect of human life during this crisis.

In the future, internet access needs to be more heavily scrutinized. We need to work on getting connections out to rural areas, ensuring prices gouging and unfair competition isn’t forcing users into high dollar contracts beyond their means, and that Net Neutrality is guaranteed so companies can’t pay extra to have more bandwidth and slow down other essential services on a customer’s paid network connection.

…and so many more

The ways that this pandemic is affecting every day life are broad and wide reaching. Be thinking of other ways this is impacting daily life and let me know some of the impacts you think of in the comments.