The quoted bit stops too soon; the original goes on to say that in the "near future" they'll be upgrading all their systems, after which it can deal with accent

The quoted bit stops too soon; the original goes on to say that in the "near future" they'll be upgrading all their systems, after which it can deal with accents, and a bit further it says that they expect it'll be ready in 2020. That's why they didn't modify the existing system: they didn't feel it was worth it since they're working on replacing the lot. This wasn't accepted as a defence with "it's 2018 and you're still using a system from 1995 wtf?!" so they still had to pay a (small) fine.