[kalensh]

It really depends. If table cell order happens to conform with a logical reading order, yeah, screen readers generally figured out when to ignore table semantics. But if the reading order does not make sense going row by row, then they are terribly broken.

Nested divs aren't that bad. (Ignoring overall performance considerations. And even then I'd suspect that's less a concern than download and running all these JS libraries.) Nested divs with a mish-mash of poorly applied ARIA can get pretty bad though!

Table layouts are also terrible for anyone who is not viewing the site at the browser width you designed it for. Accessibility is more than screen readers, and the ability to zoom or adjust browser width or display on a different device (hello mobile) is incredibly valuable for a lot of people. And I'd argue that the "ease" of using table layouts disappears as soon as you try to accommodate for any of that.

[taeric]

Right, my complaint in nested divs is more when they are a giant mix of different levels with no real discernable logic at the markup level. I think my memory is more from the garbage we made in early 2000s, though. I haven't tried to look at any modern page markup lately.