May 22, 2021 - 16:42
Some of my thoughts over the course of the semester have led me to discover the right-to-repair movement. Organized from mostly farmers who could not repair their equipment without paying companies like John Deere to repair it for them, putting them in an unfair power dynamic with a machine that is necessary to their liveliehood and that they own. Recent platforming of the issue has allowed for a multiplicity of right-to-repair coalitions in support of the rights to repair medical equipment, electronics, industrial equipment, and manufacturing apparatuses, inducing an impetus for the intersection of disability advocacy into the movement. The devices used by disabled people need to be maintained, and often when they break the individual is at the mercy of the manufacturer or healthcare provider. This occurs even when individuals know how to fix their own equipment, and often have to fix their own equipment due to lack of institutional support. I want to highlight that it works to undermine the replacibility mindset ingrained in many technologies like cellphones. This Vice Article describes one such bill that was denied in Colorado this year, and does a lot better job at describing the situation in a general context: