The problem with screen readers is summarized "Screen readers assume the content inside a table is tabular". Are divs better just because they are undefined? It seems to me that the problem would more easily be solved by adding some attributes to skip tabular treatment or to add captions, rather than ditching tables altogether. Table elements like <caption> could even be used to identify and access parts of the UI pages.

> Screen readers assume the content inside a table is tabular

I'm curious to hear from screen reader users. I recall that the gap between "what web developers think screen readers do" and "what screen readers do" has always been sizable.

Windows based screen readers (more sophisticated than Mac's VoiceOver), let the users treat only data tables as tables and ignore layout tables. Also users can adjust announcement of only column headers, only row headers, both or none while navigating through the data table.

Using tables for layout is so commonplace, I think most screenreader makers basically gave up and don't treat a table as a table unless it includes headers (<th>). Of course people who choose to use tables for layout also skip using more semantic elements, have a lot less flexibility to make layout changes (because their choices are expressed in HTML instead of CSS), and have a lot more trouble making their designs responsive.

It looks like you can just mark it as being for presentation:

<table role="presentation">

Although the screen readers seem to do a decent job of doing this automatically.

The "screen readers" argument is cargo cult in 2017.

Is it really?