[smichel17]

> Besides general accessibility (which is tag attribute based mostly)

I was under the impression that semantic html elements imply certain aria tags (I read some mdn pages on this recently so I'm pretty confident in this impression, unless I confused proposed and actual specs). So, they can help with the ease of writing accessible UI.

[extra88]

Yes, the first rule of ARIA is if you can use HTML instead of ARIA attributes, do so; e.g. use <button>, not <div role="button">.

Some roles inherent to HTML elements are only conditionally exposed; e.g. the <section> element has the ARIA landmark role of "region" but assistive technologies that list landmarks should not include such section elements unless it has also been given an accessible name, e.g. <section aria-labelledby="contact-info"><h2 id="contact-info">Contact Info</h2> ... </section>. I've read that the <aside> element is not really an ARIA "complementary" landmark if it's the child of another landmark but in practice it still seems to be treated that way.