I agree with that, and it's possible that half of what people buy and want to repair aren't going to be repairable under market conditions. Probably more; most of these cases it's just economically infeasible to repair anything that isn't new or produced recently, with supply lines still active, and it's fine when nobody wants to pay for it.

So for my definition, what makes this an edge case is specifically it's expensive medical equipment that a disabled user can't pay to acquire a part for, and companies aren't willing to produce anyway because it's so niche. 99% of equipment probably falls under "I want to repair it and someone (myself or a repair company) wants to fix it" or "I don't want to repair it because it's so expensive". The rest would be the edge case where you want to repair it and you literally can't afford to - even if you could produce the parts.

By the way, I hate this article, I just want the information and not have to parse an entire goddamn magazine to get to it.