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HTML has image maps. It's been there since longer than many of the people who might read this post have even been alive. You don't need SVG and JS for this.

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It is certainly odd that they didn't use them, especially since image maps are mentioned at the beginning of the article.

You'd still need something to outline clickable areas. Map areas do have a visible outline when focused, but I doubt that there is much else.

> something to outline clickable areas

Any graphics editor will let you do that.

What's the benefit of image maps vs SVG here?

Weird question, but let's give it a shot. Off the top of my head:

Standards, semantics, simplicity of implementation + time-to-implement, cost at runtime...

What's the impetus for re-implementing image maps with JS instead of just using the browser-native implementation?

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