The lack of high-speed Internet connectivity in care homes was one of the reasons that the elderly died during the worst of the outbreak in the US. Tech devices and services are not designed by the people who actually use them day-in and day-out. In the case of the elderly, they are often not even counted, let alone be invited to help design these products. There is a huge data gap and a lack of sufficiently granular information about the elderly in most national statistics’ compilations.
These were some of the findings by Dr. Claudia Mahler, the UN Human Rights Independent Expert for Older Persons, and a senior researcher at the German Institute for Human Rights.
While technology can make the lives of the elderly easier, at present, according to findings by her predecessor, who visited China and New Zealand in 2019 to write the latest report, that access is very uneven.
The report that was presented at the 45th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, on the 28th of September, b…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to THE UN BRIEF to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.