It was on my reading list for quite some time but eventually I read it, and it was worth it. “Select your poison” by Sarah Higley is maybe the best article covering the „remake select boxes“ topic.
Of course it starts with a well known warning:
“While pure aesthetic preference is a common reason to roll a custom select component, it is not a good reason.”
This said Sarah dives deeply into the topic and 24a11y gives her two articles to explain the underlying problems, the different solutions, how they meet WCAG success criteria and last but not least how they perform when given to real users.
Spoiler: the worst thing to do for users is using the native <select multiple>.
For everything else if you haven’t read “Select your poison” yet: do it! It’s worth it!