Right to Repair is a Hidden Digital Equity Issue. Here’s Why You Should Support the Movement.

You can't tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if their boots don't have any straps.

Over the years, we've learned from talking with organizations that one of the biggest barriers to digital equity isn't what most people think.

It's not monthly internet payments.

A lot of times individuals can handle those — if they're within reason. They might be able to get grants or scholarships or some kind of programmatic benefit for online access and digital skills training.

But a lot of times what's missing is they can't get a router. A hotspot. A keyboard. These things have a one-time higher price point to them. And when those devices break — which they inevitably do — the cost is more than financial.

An Additional Cost to Device Failure

Think about what it takes for a low-income individual or family to get a replacement device. It's not just about whether they have the money — although a replacement might cost quite a bit depending on what they need. Their time becomes very expensive because they might have to take off from work or finagle time on the weekends to travel to the storefront of the nonprofit where they purchased their device.

Often, low-income individuals are using mass transportation, so they're dependent on that schedule. Plus, they have to be at an organization during their hours of operation. And these organizations are frequently busy because there's a high need. That adds time waiting for help.

It becomes a big commitment.

Meanwhile, that person or family has lost access. That continuity of connection — which we know matters so much for education, employment, health, and civic engagement — gets interrupted.

Why Manufacturers Fight Against Right to Repair

The companies that produce the equipment we’re talking about make money the more often someone has to buy something new. They're not incentivized to keep the cost down or to build devices that are intended to work for the long term.

At its core, Right to Repair is about extending the lifespan of devices by removing manufacturer-imposed repair barriers. That means access to proprietary parts and tools. Access to repair manuals and schematics. It means no proprietary screws that require an expensive, rare screwdriver just to open a device.

It's freedom from the tyranny of the device manufacturers.

What Right to Repair Enables

The Circular Economy

Right to Repair creates a beneficial cycle in the ecosystem. It works like this:

• A plethora of electronics that are not being utilized and can’t be repaired get retired. Almost all this waste could be refurbished.
• E-refurbishers (typically digital equity nonprofits) take this equipment — computers, laptops, Chromebooks, keyboards, monitors, hotspots — and do some cleanup and refurbishment.
• They then redeploy them at a very low or free cost to other organizations, like schools and libraries, or to individuals that have a need.

The process keeps E-waste out of the landfill — which has benefits to the world in general. It has the additional benefit of keeping prices for these refurbished electronics extremely low. And it provides access to groups that may generally not have it, based on cost or availability in their areas.

Creating Jobs and Building Skills

But there's more. A lot of the time, these groups are based in areas that are traditionally lower income and where there may not be as much available industry for job opportunities. Refurbishers also create opportunities for employment, skill building, and knowledge building.

In short, they're creating jobs in these areas.

Repair at Home

Repairs don’t always have to go through an organization. Individuals may want the opportunity to do basic repairs on their own to save money and hassle. They have the product right there in front of them. If they have the ability to repair it and the information to be able to do it, it could save them quite a bit of time and trouble in a way that's not currently available to them.

And then there's the conservation mindset. The thinking goes something like this:

A device is perfectly good if one thing was fixed. Why are we going to waste it?

It feels like there is momentum around that movement, and Right to Repair that falls squarely into those crosshairs.

The ‘State’ of the Law

A Dual Movement

Right to Repair has two components.

1. A Policy Push: State-level laws mandating that manufacturers cooperate, that they provide access to parts and manuals
   
    
2. A Skills Movement: The knowledge base that has to be had to make the repairs and the physical and mental skills to actually do it

Where We Stand

Right now, there's only five or six states that have put Right to Repair laws into place. Colorado is just launching one in 2026.

And some devices are still in a gray area. Take hotspots in Colorado. They fall into a gray zone because they're considered both consumer-electronic devices and telecom equipment.

How will this shake out? Nobody knows yet. But we do know that more states need to get involved.

Laws are tricky. Once established, somebody's interpreting them. And you often don't know for the first year or two where these types of questions end up landing. That shouldn’t stop states from passing Right to Repair laws. Instead it means that digital equity organizations should get involved in the policy advocacy and implementation practices.

What You Can Do

The Right to Repair Movement is still in its early stages in the U.S. And there's a lot of resistance to it from the corporate side.

And all of this is mostly in the states. That's where the movement is happening. Five states have done it. Several more have tried and failed.

Organizations in the digital equity space should support the Right to Repair Movement in their state. They can support it at a national level too, when possible.

But even working locally matters. It’s where you already have influence and a presence.

We see lowering the barrier to repair in states around the country as a way to create more opportunities for digital equity organizations to add it to their services — packaging repairs with internet access, with digital skills training, with all the other community-based needs being met in those locations.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, Right to Repair isn't about parts and manuals and proprietary screws.

It’s about whether people can stay connected. Whether they can keep learning, keep working, keep engaging. Keep doing what they need to do to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

And that starts when the cost of internet-ready devices comes down.

Think about the purpose of internet access. It’s to create opportunities for people to take more control over aspects of their life — health, education, civic engagement, employment — all areas that are increasingly only available online.

Supporting Right to Repair is another way that digital equity organizations can help empower the people they serve. This is an issue that has been coming over our radar more and more lately. We support organizations doing work in this area and see that the potential exists to do more. 

As we said at the top of this article, you can't tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if their boots don't have straps.

As a sector, let’s work together to let the device manufacturers know that they should include those bootstraps on every product. Let’s tell our state legislators to pass Right to Repair laws. And let’s get behind the organizations that work to provide the affordable technology that narrows the digital divide.

Learn more about the right to repair movement on the Digital Right to Repair Coalition website.