Its more or less the same with every screen reader and browser I know. If there was a simple fix for this inherent issue, I wouldn't have to talk about it. You might get a bit of stuff out of the way if you configure less verbosity of the screen reader, but it doesn't really help with slow interactions. Problems include:
* Virtual buffer: In most systems, the DOM is rendered to a "virtual buffer" and the screen reader lets you navigate that, because cursor (caret) support was on the map for accessibility, but was never really sufficiently implemented on the browser side. So screen readers had to solve it in a separate step.
* Using the keyboard to do screen reading and navigation on a site conflicts with keyboard shortcuts from that site. So most screen reader have two modes: You switch between entering text in a field and navigating/reading the site. Its basically like vi insert mode, but less simple.
Those are the major issues from my POV. The rest of the slowness likely comes from having to go through the accessibility API of your OS.
* Virtual buffer: In most systems, the DOM is rendered to a "virtual buffer" and the screen reader lets you navigate that, because cursor (caret) support was on the map for accessibility, but was never really sufficiently implemented on the browser side. So screen readers had to solve it in a separate step.
* Using the keyboard to do screen reading and navigation on a site conflicts with keyboard shortcuts from that site. So most screen reader have two modes: You switch between entering text in a field and navigating/reading the site. Its basically like vi insert mode, but less simple.
Those are the major issues from my POV. The rest of the slowness likely comes from having to go through the accessibility API of your OS.