Suarise

Founded by Rahma Utami, Suarise is pioneering digital accessibility in Indonesia—a country where 70% of the disability population are entrepreneurs, but the digital platforms they depend on remain largely inaccessible. After a decade as a creative digital strategist working with brands like Go-Jek, Samsung, and The Body Shop, Rahma pivoted her career entirely. A Chevening scholarship took her to the University of Sussex, and a consultancy role at AbilityNet in London opened her eyes to digital accessibility practices that barely existed back home.

She returned to Indonesia in 2017 and founded Suarise to change that—building the country’s first social enterprise dedicated to disability inclusion in the digital sector.

What are they building?

Suarise operates across three pillars: accessibility consultancy, training, and talent development for visually impaired people.

On the consultancy side, they conduct accessibility audits, code-level fixes, WCAG compliance assessments, and user research directly with persons with disabilities. Their clients range from local businesses to unicorn startups like Go-Jek, and they’ve worked with the United Nations, British Council, and UNDP. Their training arm runs the A11y Bootcamp—an intensive three-month program that turns tech professionals into accessibility evangelists. They also deliver corporate workshops, academic guest lectures, and helped develop Indonesia’s national digital accessibility guidelines with the Ministry of Informatics and Communication. Perhaps most distinctive is their VIP (Visually Impaired People) Talent Development program, which provides vocational training for visually impaired individuals to become professional digital content creators—giving them the skills to earn income in the digital economy, not just benefit from it.

The why?

Rahma Utami spent the first decade of her career in creative digital advertising—crafting campaigns for brands like Barbie Indonesia, Grab Taxi, Pocari Sweat, LG, and Samsung. She was good at it. But something was missing.

With a design degree from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Rahma understood how digital products were built. What she didn’t yet understand was how many people they excluded.

A Chevening Award took her to the University of Sussex for a master’s in Digital Media Practice for Development and Social Change. Then came a role at AbilityNet in London—one of the UK’s leading digital accessibility consultancies. For the first time, she saw what it looked like when accessibility was treated as standard practice, not an afterthought.

She brought those practices back to Indonesia in 2017 and founded Suarise. The landscape was stark: Indonesia had almost no digital accessibility infrastructure, no established standards, and minimal awareness. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Suarise’s research found that public health information about handwashing wasn’t reaching the visually impaired community—infographics and videos lacked verbal descriptions entirely.

What sets Suarise apart is Rahma’s insistence on empowerment over sympathy. “This month marks 8 years I build Suarise,” she wrote recently, “and never once ‘pity’ displayed in any of our activities.” The VIP Talent Development program doesn’t just advocate for inclusion—it trains visually impaired people to be digital professionals, then connects them with paying work.

The philosophy runs deeper than business. As Rahma puts it: “Nothing about us without us.” Every aspect of Suarise’s work involves persons with disabilities directly—as testers, trainers, content creators, and collaborators.

“Accessibility makes collaboration with disabilities increasingly unlimited. We build not from pity, but from the conviction that when digital spaces are truly inclusive, everyone benefits.”

— Rahma Utami, Founder & Accessibility Director of Suarise