I find no fault with your approach to design and applaud your criticism of the <DIV> and <SPAN> approach that has become the basis for so many web pages. As a regular reader, I also appreciate your special attention to the needs of people with visual impairment. Accessibility is an important topic that all of us should pay attention to.

My original comment was about the seeming conflation of the different terms: “accessibility”, “progressive enhancement”, “graceful degradation”, and “semantics”. MDN teaches us that these are distinct concerns, dedicating separate pages to each of them. Each is a big topic in its own right. Over time, authors have weighed in on each of them, giving us a broad community-based definition of these concerns, as well as design philosophies for workable solutions. I didn’t see this distinction in your otherwise fine original article.

I don’t take issue with your approach to design. I wish more programmers would care as much as you do.