[rictic]

A click handler can be doing a lot of things that aren't much like a button, like letting you close a modal if you click outside of it, capturing mouse events for a game, or passively recording events for analytics. All that a click handler tells you is that there's some code that sometimes cares about some clicks somewhere inside that element.

[knute]

Also a click handler on a div isn't going to do much for someone who isn't using a mouse, which would include a lot of screen reader users.

[randyrand]

All of those seem like examples of things you’d want your screen reader to tell you about.

[zahlman]

Sure.

What is the screen reader's plan for determining the purpose of the attached JavaScript?

[randyrand]

Same as a button. Read the text in the element. If no text, skip it or say "clickable".

I'm not arguing a div is better. I'm just saying screen readers could announce a div with an onclick if they wanted to.