If I activate VoiceOver from the System Preferences as described above
and click the Emacs frame, then the whole content area (i.e., other
than the title bar and the tool bar, but including scroll bars) of the
frame gets bordered in black, and the application name ("Emacs"), the
title bar name, and the buffer text get spoken in this order. But the
cursor keys do not cause the character under the cursor to be spoken.
If this is heading to the right direction, then Core Text vs. NS Text
system, both of which are used in the Mac port, has basically nothing
to do with accessibility.
Yep, you are going in the right direction -- menues, prompts, buttons
and all such should be spoken. Look at the system preferences dialog
and you will get an idea. Look at textedit and you will get an idea of
what we would like the cursor to do.