Any cloud service that handles federal data has to clear FedRAMP, the government-wide program established in 2011 and now anchored in law by the FedRAMP Authorization Act of December 2022. FedRAMP takes the NIST 800-53 control catalog, the same catalog federal agencies use to satisfy their FISMA security obligations, and applies it to cloud products at a Low, Moderate, or High baseline depending on the sensitivity of the data involved. A mobile backend built for this market has to be architected with that control catalog in mind from the first schema decision, not adapted to it after a security review flags a gap.
Digital accessibility carries the same weight. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, amended in 1998, requires federal agencies to make the technology they build, buy, or use accessible to people with disabilities, evaluated against the WCAG 2.0 AA standard. Any vendor selling a digital product to the federal government has to prove conformance, typically through a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, or risk losing the deal. An app built for a DC-based agency, contractor, or civic tech company has to treat accessibility as a launch requirement, not a fix scheduled for after the contract is signed.
That combination, mandatory cloud security review and mandatory accessibility conformance, sets a specific bar. An app built for Washington DC has to survive a federal procurement process that checks both, and a vendor that treats either as optional loses the contract before the technical work is even evaluated.