Abstract
The transition of modern web development toward JavaScript-driven Single Page Application (SPA) frameworks such as React, Angular, and Vue has introduced structural accessibility barriers that disproportionately affect visually impaired users relying on screen reader technologies. While the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) provide a widely adopted compliance framework, they address what must be accessible rather than how efficiently a visually impaired user can navigate complex, dynamic interfaces. This paper proposes the Navigational Efficiency Gap (NEG) as a task-level efficiency metric, defined as the ratio of task-completion time for a screen reader user to that of a sighted user on identical web interface tasks. A structured evaluation was conducted on five high-complexity UI components representative of modern SPA architectures, using NVDA screen reader testing combined with automated WCAG auditing via Axe-Core v4.8 and Google Lighthouse v11. Preliminary findings from this controlled study indicate that screen reader users required between 17.5× and 28.7× more time to complete identical tasks compared to sighted users on unmodified, compliance-passing interfaces. Task success rates ranged from 40% to 92% across the tested components. Four categories of structural accessibility barriers were identified and classified: Semantic Mismatch, Focus Fragmentation, Auditory Clutter, and State Synchronization Failure. These results suggest a significant gap between WCAG compliance and practical navigational usability for visually impaired users in SPA environments, providing an empirical basis for the development of a semantic-first remediation methodology. Limitations of the study, including testing environment scope and sample size constraints, are explicitly discussed.
Keywords: Web Accessibility; Visually Impaired Users; Screen Reader; WCAG 2.2; Navigational Efficiency Gap; ARIA; Single Page Applications; Inclusive Design; Semantic HTML; NVDA; Task Efficiency.
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