The development of speech technology has made significant progress in recent years, with AI-led speech-to-text becoming the dominant choice for transcription at scale. However, despite its impressive capabilities, speech recognition can be a barrier to accessibility, particularly for non-native speakers and individuals from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Research has shown that factors such as language, accent, race, gender, and age significantly impact the accuracy of speech recognition, leading to unequal access to digital technologies and a digital divide. The lack of representation of underrepresented languages in academia and industry exacerbates this issue, with modern deep learning systems relying heavily on data to achieve accuracy. To address these challenges, companies like Speechmatics are working towards making speech technology more inclusive and accessible, supporting 48 languages and aiming to expand coverage and improve technology to help interact with the digital world fairly for all people, regardless of language or background.