Design should always primarily focus on the user experience and never be guided by the implementation challenges or the technical aspects. If the interface doesn’t gain any additional functionality, your web applications will get worse if you implement your own widget. Not only aren’t you using any of the standardized widgets which are fully compliant to the accessibility guidelines, you’re probably also reducing the number of potential users by keeping them from interacting with your widget in non-browser user agents.  

 -  Laurent Haan