It's not just that it can be overcome, but it must be overcome. We each must look at these expressions as they are made, and infer what is intended by them --

It's not just that it can be overcome, but it must be overcome. We each must look at these expressions as they are made, and infer what is intended by them -- it may be more awkward for a blind person, but understanding "greater than" is not fundamentally different from seeing > and inferring the meaning (though you'll lack the visual queue of an arrow-like symbol). The article doesn't actually point to any better user experience, it just imagines one might be possible as a screen reader might be able to use his notion of "semantically correct markup" better than Google's -- even though Google is one of the only serious implementations paying attention to specifically breadcrumb-related markup.