If you write some JS (or CSS) and you're kinda OK, you may make some mistakes but still eek out a reasonable outcome.

If you try to write A11Y-friendly markup but you're not a deep expert on fifty different ARIA details, you'll apparently ruin everything for SR users.

I've spent many, many hundreds of hours trying to learn and care enough about A11Y to figure out how to do reasonable things with my markup.... but no matter how much I work at this, it still feels like it's all f'd up for SR users if it's not nearly perfect.

Seriously, IMO no other aspect of frontend development seems even remotely as complex and nuanced as A11Y, nor as likely to make me feel like I'm shit at this.

"Oh you tried to use a native HTML element for that semantic meaning, but didn't realize you should have just used this special aria role value on a div? You kinda suck at this. Stand back and let the experts handle it."

Not sure why A11Y feels this way, unlike pretty much any other frontend technology/discipline. I literally feel like a bad person because I'm not able get anywhere near close enough to a pleasing experience for SR users.

I do plenty of stupid shit in my JS. I have all kinds of ridiculous/naive CSS.

But we talk about my markup not being A11Y enough, and all of a sudden I feel like I should just quit frontend development altogether.