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Yes, via a new standard from W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative. The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) specification provides a way to pepper page markup with the additional accessibility information needed by users of assistive technologies such as screen readers.
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Demo - Firefox 3.5: XMLHttpRequest improvements - blog.mozbox.org
A great blog post on 2 new XHR features. Progress indication and cross-domain request support. Nifty!

