It is often difficult for a listener to understand accented speech, that is, language spoken with an accent other than the “normal” accent.
The “normal” accent is also referred to as “unaccented” or “standard” speech as spoken by a native speaker of the language. In contrast, accented speech is the language as spoken by a non-native speaker for whom this is a second language. It would therefore be a significant improvement to the intelligibility of the accented speech if the effect of the accent could be alleviated.