I mostly agree with you. But I think the screen reader should be smart enough to automatically read whatever appears on the page after you activate a link. So the problem with the pre-order popup could be solved in the screen reader.
The heuristic I'd use in a screen reader is as follows: if a user activates a link and a new element becomes visible but nothing else happens within half a second or so, read the contents of that element as if it were a newly loaded page.
FWIW for anyone else reading this thread, ndarilek and I have each developed a screen reader (on Android and Windows, respectively).