What screenreaders do have trouble with, however, is static layouts where the "meaningful" content is buried six levels deep, and often at the end of the logical document, just to make room for a bunch of navigation aids and advertisements.
That, however, isn't a reason not to use tables where they help. Also, note that with just a tiny amount of javascript it's possible to come up with a document that displays in a nice table layout and has a nice logical structure for screenreaders. It just requires that you get beyond the pedantry of the table.
This might be the case, but it would be really interesting to hear something about it from someone who actually have real-world experience with them.
Screen readers should have long adapted to that scenario.
For very simple form designs, sure. But that idea breaks down when you have a more sophisticated form and need to consider horizontal "flow" between fields.
Tables are hammers, but not all forms are nails.
I challenge the hackers here to find a way to teach this to the CSS diehards. I often wonder why the accessibility of CSS based layouts is often preached by the same people who make Flash sites.