Screen readers are basically everything you hated about developing for IE6, but in an alternate world where there are 3 different IE6’s each of which works completely differently.
Three? Definition lists are read completely differently in Firefox, Edge, or Edge-in-IE-mode in Windows 11 Narrator. Multiply JAWS, NVDA, Narrator, VoiceOver, Orca, ChromeVox by Firefox, Chromium, IE, WebKit, Opera Mini. (Some of those combinations aren't possible, but 20 isn't an overestimate.)
Then realise: it's not just screenreaders. It's Braille displays, sip-and-puffs, Magnifier, High Contrast mode, keyboard navigation, speech recognition… Seemingly nobody tested any of it before they gave it to the end-user, so now it's your job, as the web developer, to make something that works.
Good luck! I recommend settling for "doesn't make it worse", since that's almost achievable.
