Not true... this is why they had to add aria- ...
The first WAI-ARIA specification was published in 2014 [0]. HTML5 became an official W3C recommendation that same year [1]. It includes semantic elements like <nav> and <main> that have ARIA roles built in [2]. The Wikipedia page for WAI-ARIA includes the "five rules of ARIA" where the first rule is "Don’t use ARIA if you can achieve the same semantics with a native HTML element or attribute" [3].
You almost always still need some extra ARIA attributes to be fully accessible, but it's much less extra work than most other platforms and it works (mostly) the same on every operating system (including phones). You don't have to build anything yourself-- you just have to know which attributes to use. Just ask any blind people you know whether they prefer using a website or a native app.
[0] https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-wai-aria-20140320/Overview.ht...
[1] https://www.w3.org/news/2014/html5-is-a-w3c-recommendation/