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...
Sure, but have you ever used a screen reader? Support for aira markup is often limited and if you confuse things with semantically muddled HTML you're almost guaranteed to degrade accessibility.
The more basic and "standard" you can keep your HTML the less likely users using assistive technology will run into problems.
Aria is great, especially the basic stuff like aria-label, but where you can avoid using it you should.
I've worked on accessibility projects for years, treating aria as a source of truth or something that can be relied on isn't a good idea. We might get there eventually, but we're not there today.
Great. Another developer that sees accessibility as another specs compliance fetishism exercise instead of actually being way to make things easier to use for more people.