[someweirdperson]

If they are no good for screen reader users, what's their puprpose for non-screen reader users? I can only think of bad use-cases. Duplicating content the site wants to promote or a duplicated navigation. Things would probably be more clean without in most cases.

[kageneko]

Screen readers often read things in particular ways that non-screen readers would interpret differently. One example that I've run into is using all caps to label something, like "ACCOUNT NAME". Screen readers will typically read out each letter individually instead of as a word. There could be other things, like describing field colors or something that are not as useful when audio only.

[someweirdperson]

Should the all uppercase be something CSS like text-transform: capitalize, and not affect screen readers?

Where something is explicitly visual-only, I agree that there can be cases.