Bachelor's or master's thesis: web performance & accessibility (m/f/d)

What it’s about

Almost every website owner wants a fast, accessible site, yet hardly anyone measures it regularly. And the two goals are closely linked: clean, semantic HTML helps screen readers, makes pages lighter and helps search engines and AI assistants understand content correctly. Your thesis looks at this using real websites instead of lab examples. The position is 100% remote; you can work from Germany, Austria or Switzerland.

vona is a web agency from Leipzig that works remote-first and serves clients across German-speaking countries, from trades businesses to established brands. For us, AI integration, development, design and search visibility belong together. We agree up front on how success will be measured, so a thesis on measurability fits us well.

Structure pays off, as shown by the automated GEO optimization of an online store: 800 product pages received structured data and more precise copy within 3 days, followed by three times as many mentions in Google AI Overviews. Your thesis starts one level deeper, in the code of the pages themselves.

A possible research question: how strongly do Core Web Vitals and automatically testable WCAG criteria correlate on websites of small and mid-sized companies – and which measures improve both with the least effort? Your own ideas and focus areas are very welcome, for example on AI-assisted accessibility testing.

Your tasks

• Develop a measurement approach for load time and accessibility, for example with Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights and axe.
• Measure a selection of websites from our projects, plus our own Astro-built website, as a baseline.
• Derive improvements and implement some of them yourself – in HTML, CSS and TypeScript, and for images and fonts.
• Measure again and evaluate what has really changed and what only looks better on paper.
• Examine where AI tools such as Claude help to find and fix issues, and where a human needs to check.
• Write up results that hold up academically and work in everyday agency practice.

What you bring

• You are studying computer science, media informatics, web development or a related subject at bachelor’s or master’s level.
• You are comfortable with HTML, CSS and JavaScript and know what happens in the browser while a page loads.
• You are interested in accessibility and have come across WCAG or the German BITV before.
• You work carefully with measurement data and present results clearly.
• You speak good German, as the client projects you will study are in German-speaking countries.

Nice to have, but not a must: experience with screen readers, with Astro, or with automated tests in a build pipeline.

What we offer

• Your research uses real client projects, not constructed examples.
• Within the company, a fixed point of contact supports you on the subject matter, with regular check-ins; academic supervision stays with your university.
• For your research you can use current AI tools such as Claude, Claude Code and ChatGPT.
• You plan your time around your semester and work entirely from home.
• If it’s a good fit, further collaboration after the thesis is possible, for example on a follow-up project – as a possibility, not a promise.

How to apply

Write us a few sentences using the form at the bottom of this page: what you study, when your thesis should start and what draws you to the topic. A link to your CV, GitHub or LinkedIn is enough; no formal cover letter needed. Already have your own research question? Send it along. We usually reply within a week.