Google Chrome accessible tree cache issue with UI Automation

Question

Scrolling in simple pages is optimized to not require computation from the renderer. Only the compositor and the GPU are needed to scroll therefore the render tree which is only updated from the renderer is still the same.

Requiring the renderer to traverse the DOM and update the Accessibility tree during a scroll runs contrary with the several years effort of having smooth scrolling, specially for touch devices so I don't think you are going to get traction on a bug fix.

Your idea of an extension I think is the best (although ugly) compromise. But rather that changing zoom, doing a small mutation of the page (or DOM) might be a better solution. Try for example adding a invisible (or nearly so) element with a low z-order. You will also need to rate control the mutation so it only happens 1 times per second or even less often.