Sounds to me she just doesn't know how to use her screen reader. There are several commands you can use to control what the screen reader reads.

I have mostly worked with screenreaders which read what you want them to. It starts to read everything on the page, but I press control, and it stops. Sometimes, it takes a minute, but it stops. Then, I can use the numpad, the numbers on the right side of the keyboard, to navigate the page. You can also use the numbers up top to move straight to headings at certain levels, use the letters to go to things like blockquotes or forms, or use the lists. Hold down insert,/numpad zero and press f5 to open forms list. It will list forms on the page and you can go to certain ones by using the letters. Just press the first letter of a form, and it should go streight to it. Some forms aren't labeled, but think about how far down the page the form you need is, and do some looking with the reading keys to findout if you have landed in the right spot. If you see two unlabeled editboxes together, that's likely a log in area. A box with a button after it is usually a search field.

Hold down insert and press f7 to open the links list. You navigate this list the same way. You can tab past the okay button and find one that says move to link. This will move your cursor to the link without clicking it. This helps if you know what links are near what you're looking for. You can find the part of the page that interests you quickly and easily that way.

The windows keyboard commands work while Jaws is running. One that Jaws has been adapted to work very well with is windows find. Press the f3 key, or hold down control and press f. It will open up a dialog box where you can type something you're looking for. If you are looking for something that appears more than once on a page, press the f3 key, and you can move directly to the next instance of that search term. If I can't find something on a page, this works most of the time when other methods do not, and I don't want to spend all day going line by line down the page.

This won't work if the numlock is on.

The one I use, it's called Jaws, does not read the title bar and tool bars unless you're using the Jaws cursor. There are two cursors with Jaws. The one with the lower voice reads more of the technical stuff like toolbars, but the other one reads what your computer is focused on.

Jaws is really expensive, but try your favorite taurent site. They might have it.

I'm assuming she's low vision and your best bet would be ZoomText (for PCs) as mentioned above and it has a feature where it speaks where the pointer is.

Mac has its own built in application with zoom and voice over features that can be turned on and off and can isolate only what you want to read.

Have you contacted your local Easter Seals? They set me up with all of my assistive technology and even had a really cool guy come to my apartment to install it and walk me through using everything. I'm low vision (legally blind, not actually blind) so all of my tech has the magnifiers but there has to be something that will work for her as well! I had to go through my local voc rehab to get in touch with Easter Seals though, so there might be some hoops to jump through. I don't know if this is at all helpful - feel free to PM me if you'd like!

It sounds like she has some vision? Maybe try ZoomText. It's made for people with low vision rather than total blindness, but it does speak if you want it to.