I'm working on a new website, and I'm trying to decide how I want to balance the need for semantic correctness, with other important stuff, like development time. I know that semantics are supposed to be important for SEO, and accessibility for blind people. And those are important to me, and shouldn't take too much extra time. So I'll design them in, from the beginning. Anyway, my question is, what else is semantic correctness currently useful for? If there's something else I may consider worthwhile, I'd rather spend a little extra time now to build it in, than wait until later, when it may be more difficult.
Also, I know there are a lot of future possibilities. Some good, and some not (I've seen all the Terminator movies:). But I'll wait and see what happens with those.
edit: I should have mentioned that supporting some old browsers is important for this project, so being semantically correct won't be easy. Especially since I haven't done a lot of browser programming.
I did some more research, so now I can answer my own question.
Other than making sure my site is accessible to disabled people and search engines, there isn't currently anything all that important about semantic correctness, for my project. And I think search engines and screen readers are sophisticated enough these days, to handle some incorrect semantics, as long as the content structure isn't too confusing.
I can see semantic HTML elements being useful for documentation though, as long as it doesn't complicate my code.