Screen readers learned to cope with the web
long before standards compliance was the in thing. I'm sure Google are concerned and are putting just enough in to make the website work on as many browsers in as many situations as possible, but that doesn't mean they have to make it perfect.

I'm not saying standards compliance is bad of course. I support it, but there's always exceptions, and high bandwidth sites are one of them.
(casiotone (multiple personality disorder version), Sat 4 Mar 2006, 23:53, archived)