In the olden days, internet explorer couldn't support html5 tags. I found a snippet of code from my 2010 library [0] that I used to use to remedy the problem. You see if you created the tags via JavaScript, IE would somehow recognize them. You could discard them right after. Here was my script:

    (function(d) {
        'abbr article aside audio bdi canvas data datalist details figcaption figure footer header hgroup mark meter nav output progress section summary time video'.replace(/\b\w+/g,function (a){
            d.createElement(a);});
    })(document);

[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/revisiting-my-old-javascript

I'm sure that's how the popular html5shim used to work, too. I remember looking at the source out of curiosity.