What is The Right to Repair?

You may have read about it recently, as the movement is trending and growing in popularity, but just what is The Right to Repair? Simply put, it’s a movement gaining considerable traction in the United States and Europe, led by consumers demanding that manufacturers change their designs in order to make their products more repairable. As you may have guessed, many of the products in question are tech products, but the movement doesn’t exclusively center around tech even though it may seem that way at times.

Just what’s so hard to fix in all our latest devices and products? Well, take cell phones. When was the last time you bought a phone with an easily replaceable battery? True, some fixed batteries bring about certain benefits like waterproofing, but those benefits ultimately come at great expense to consumers. "In the latest models, the battery and the display are often glued to the gadget's body, which also makes it waterproof. It's a low-cost compromise enabling manufacturers to focus on thin design rather than reparability. That cannot be achieved when you screw the parts together," said Dorothea Kessler, communications director at iFixit Europe.

If ever the phone in question should need a new battery, the owner usually has two options: replace it altogether, or bring it back to the manufacturer for a replacement that usually isn’t worth the cost. The Right to Repair movement seeks to change all that, and aims to bring back a certain degree of repairability to new products. Though the movement is young, it’s gaining ground quickly, and the team here at Delevu encourages you to do some more research.

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