JAWS doesn't read div after pressing skip to link in Internet Explorer
As pointed out in this article on skip links, in-page links can have different behavior across browsers. What's happening in IE is that IE is only scrolling the page - it's not actually moving focus (you can verify this by checking document.activeElement in the console) - and since there's no focus change, JAWS remains silent.
A simple workaround is to use javascript to set focus:
<a onclick="jQuery('#main').focus()" href="javascript:void(0)">Skip to content</a>The href="javascript:void(0)" here is to suppress navigation - otherwise IE will essentially re-navigate to the page, potentially interfering with focus.