Disability and human rights: the right to benefit from scientific progress

People with disabilities experience limitations accessing technologies critical to community participation. This chapter examines utilities of the human right to science in reducing significantly complicated barriers to accessing life-enhancing technologies. Barriers arise not only from expense, but from lesser known obstacles encountered translating scientific discovery and knowledge into clinical applications. This investigation encompasses a combination of perspectives including sociology, human rights, health sciences, disability, neuroscience, and technology. The human right to science is linked to historical conceptualizations of disability under different disability models and frameworks such as the International Classification of Disability, Functioning, and Health. The current state of neurotechnology’s progression from discovery to translation in the United States is examined, concluding with a discussion of stakeholder roles and rights-based solutions. The contemporary issues addressed link a human rights framework to economic factors that drive access through social systems, medical institutions, and political systems associated with technology access.