Note: this article is written from the perspective of Rifat Najmi, founder of radikal studio.

I learned about accessibility in 2018. I truly understood it in 2023.

For years in between those two moments, accessibility was a professional skill to me, something I studied, applied at work, and occasionally shared with other designers in short sessions. I never expected that one day, accessibility would stop being just a skill, and start being something I actually lived through.

The beginning: accessibility as a skill

I've been working as a designer since 2011, building digital products for companies ranging from local startups to larger tech companies like IBM, Gojek, Traveloka, and Halodoc. In 2018, I took a course on accessibility and started applying some of its principles from a visual design perspective.

I felt like I understood it well enough. I even gave a few talks on WCAG to the design community. But my understanding back then stayed mostly at the surface, something I knew how to apply technically, without really feeling its weight.

2023: when accessibility stopped being theory

In mid-2023, I was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré and Miller Fisher overlap syndrome, a rare condition that attacks the nervous system and caused temporary paralysis. I spent nine days in the hospital, and it took roughly three months of therapy before I could move and walk normally again.

During that time, for the first time, I genuinely experienced what I had spent years designing solutions for on behalf of other people: not being able to rely on my own body for things that used to feel trivial, needing help with the most basic activities, and navigating a world that mostly wasn't built with this in mind.

I recovered, and I'm grateful for that. But the experience changed how I saw my own work. Accessibility stopped being a technical checklist. It became the difference between someone being able to get through their day or not.

2025: realizing how much I still didn't understand

In early 2025, I sat the CPACC (Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies) exam. Partway through, I struggled to answer a basic question about when an image should have alt text, even though it's one of the very first criteria in WCAG. I genuinely thought I'd fail that exam, though I ended up passing.

That moment made me stop and ask myself: after years of working in this field, why was I still struggling with something this fundamental? I realized my understanding had mostly been about "how to apply it," not "why each criterion actually matters."

That's what led me to build Panduan WCAG Indonesia, a project I originally created to deepen my own understanding, by re-explaining every WCAG criterion in plain language. I released it to coincide with Global Accessibility Awareness Day in May 2025. Not long after, I realized a technical guide alone wasn't enough; people also need to build awareness of why accessibility matters in the first place. That's what pushed me to build Aksesibel as a follow-up.

Acknowledging my own disability

Later that same year, after months of trying to figure out recurring leg weakness, I was diagnosed with polymyositis, a chronic autoimmune condition I'll be living with for the rest of my life, not something I could fully recover from the way I did in 2023.

In August 2025, I helped build Tidak Terlihat, an awareness campaign for invisible disabilities, together with one of the petitioners behind the judicial review of Indonesia's Disability Law at the Constitutional Court. Working on that project was the first time I openly acknowledged that I myself am a person with a disability, not just someone who designs solutions for other people.

It took getting to that point for me to truly understand that accessibility wasn't a topic I was learning from the outside. It's part of my own life.

Why radikal studio exists

All of this, my career as a designer, the health crises I went through, the relearning triggered by a near-failure in a certification exam, and my involvement in disability advocacy, eventually came together in one place: radikal studio.

I didn't start radikal studio just to sell audit or consulting services. I started it because I know, firsthand, that accessibility isn't only about meeting technical standards. It's about making sure the digital world has room for everyone, including people who, like me, didn't initially realize they were part of that group.

If you're considering paying more attention to accessibility at your organization, I understand if it feels abstract or disconnected from your everyday business needs. I used to think that way too. Until I realized that anyone, at any point, could end up on the other side of the screen you're designing.