So, after receiving basically zero helpful answers - and finding no further helpful information online, I think I figured out something that we, as developers, NEED to start requesting from browser vendors and w3c. We need to be able to request hardware access from users, in a similar fashion that we can request to access a user's location, or how we can request to send a user push notifications.
Until web developers are allowed the same control as native application developers over hardware, we will be left at a huge disadvantage over what we can offer our users. I don't want to have my users install third/fourth party plugins to enable a little more control/access to their I/O. Users should not have to be inundated with keeping more software than just their web browser updated to have websites run well and securely. And I, for one, do not feel like it should be necessary to write in more languages than HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and PHP to get the same experience a user would get from a native application.
I have no idea how we approach browser vendors about this, but I feel like it would be good to start doing this.