formatting and/or locking date picker field to force calendar usage?

[binaryartifex]

Is there a viable way to format the returned date for the date picker field to something like Jan 1st 2024 while still maintaining a high level of accessibility? further to this, if one is still using the original date fields, is it possible to make these readonly to force the user to open the calendar dialog? this is mostly to prevent annoying validation logic on the date picker fields themselves when i can just constrain the choices in the calendar itself...