Welcome to the mudroom, a joint commentary series of Rumbel Strip, Vermont, and the Dooryard.

Today, a commentary from Jessamine West of Randolph Vermont, Jessamine studies and

writes about the digital divide and she solves technology problems for schools and libraries.

This summer, she found herself unemployed and forced to use some of the same state agency websites

she'd been helping other people to use.

This is her story.

I live in Vermont and I teach people how to use computers for a living. I recently

stopped doing one of my internet jobs and I had to spend some time interacting with websites in the past I had only helped people use.

I also work at the local school here in Randolph, Vermont in addition to the job I had on the Internet,

so I knew I'd have some work that was coming up in the fall.

But until then, I was looking for work, and while I was looking for work, I filed for unemployment

and had to sign up for health care. My experiences with both of those were what you might call suboptimal.

Suboptimal is what I've learned to say

because people tend to stop listening

when you say sucks, but honestly the experience was pretty bad.

Now when I'm in Randolph I teach computers for a living.

Every week I'm showing somebody how email works or what Facebook is.

I know that complaining about

technology is kind of a national past time and I know that we've refined it to a

high art in Vermont. That said, I think I can confidently state that both websites I've had to interact with as an

uninsured under-employed Vermonter functioned poorly and didn't have to be that way.

And I feel like we can do better. A lot better. So the Vermont Health Connect website

...