[justinmarsan]

Even the Aria docs say you should rely on semantics and only use Aria for when that's not possible...

I'd much rather use a <button> that exposes itself as such and has well known interaction functions, then create my own div and have to handle the clicks, keyboard navigation, navigation shortcuts and so on... That actually requires a lot more knowledge than HTML semantics, and unless you test frequently with expert and non-expert assistive tech users, you won't know what kind of UX issues you'll be creating for them...