> it's very hard to find high profile examples of sites that are "HTML first"

Because the tools to create it are relatively new, and the sites you're speaking of had already been written. What high-profile site didn't already have a massive legacy React/Angular/Vue codebase, and a team of framework-trained developers, as of 2021?

> One semi-objective thing we lost was accessibility.

TBH that's not a framework vs HTML issue, that's just sloppy or inexperienced devs

I argue that it is a framework issue.

If the rendering framework doesn't support accessibility as a first class citizen (or better yet, automatically creates/makes accessibility part of what is rendered), then the framework is not suitable for production use.

React simply diffs the DOM and updates it in an efficient way. If you are putting weird divs instead of anchors and buttons (or instead of special components provided by a React-based framework), that's entirely on you.

if you're using react and then hand roll custom components and don't do accessibility, then it's just as bad as choosing a component framework which doesn't do accessibility. I am not talking about react (or any framework directly) specifically.

> entirely on you

of course - choosing a framework or hand rolling one makes no difference. It's still not production ready, if it doesn't have accessibility built in.

I think the point they're making is that you'd have the same problems with developers working HTML-first. Accessibility does not simply come for free in either situation, you need to make sure it's present.

Choosing, for example, whether to use a div with a click handler, or a proper button, is a decision you need to make regardless of whether or not you're using a framework.

So it seems incorrect to say that you lost accessibility in this case due to the framework. You lost accessibility due to developers who didn't understand the web platform well enough to design proper accessible controls. If they hadn't used a framework, they'd probably still not have made the site accessible.

> developers who didn't understand the web platform well enough to design proper accessible controls.

And i actually think that it is _better_ for a developer not to have to do their own accessibility controls, but delegate this problem to the component framework. They have to know about the problem, but not have to spend cognitive budget thinking about it while they compose their UI from framework components - this should _automatically_ be taken care of by the design of the framework.

But you're using the same component framework regardless of whether you use React or not: it's the same underlying elements that you decide between, and the same process of configuring then correctly to be accessible.

What could the frameworks do to make it more natural for inexperienced developers to do the right thing?

This article had as a “good” example a div with an onclick, I think he fixed it, but it shows a lot..

Frameworks also have linters that will help a lot, it’s on you to use them