WCAG AA conformance is frequently treated as a documentation exercise — an audit performed after launch to produce a compliance statement. Retrofitted accessibility is always more expensive and less effective than designed-in accessibility.
On public-sector platforms, the stakes are higher: these are often services citizens are required to use, with no reasonable alternative. That changes the design brief from 'accessible where practical' to 'accessible by default.'
In practice, that means testing with actual assistive technology throughout the design phase, not just at QA; writing content at a reading level appropriate for the population it serves; and designing for low-bandwidth, older-device contexts as a primary use case, not an edge case.
Conformance follows naturally when accessibility is a design constraint from day one rather than a remediation task at the end.