Umm... this is disingenuous. At the time, most websites were built using tables and were completely non-accessible. One of the reasons we moved to XHTML, semantic markup, CSS instead of Tables... was to enable accessibility.
> One of the reasons we moved to XHTML, semantic markup, CSS instead of Tables... was to enable accessibility.
Again, nope. Try a design with 3-4 columns with the old CSS and see how it behaves. The order of elements in the HTML often differs from the visual order, confusing the readers.
It also breaks tab-navigation, even the https://csszengarden.com/ has the "View All Designs" button that is inaccessible.
Then add absolutely-positioned headers and other popular CSS patterns.
To this day, this is STILL not working well for DIV-based designs.
Now try to navigate something like the WSJ/NYTimes home page.
If you remember the old days of good UI, there was this idea of "tab groups".