I wish I could tell all the developers out there who dutifully use semantic HTML because they are told that good developers who pay attention to code quality, a good developer experience and accessibility will automatically build accessible websites. I mean, in most cases this is the case (lucky us).

That's why I hate to break it to you: not all elements are automatically accessible just because they are semantic. Some HTML elements do not have browser or screen reader support by default. The same applies to some HTML attributes, which should be used with caution.

Let's take a closer look at some of these elements, what they are, why they are not accessible, and what you can do to make them accessible.