The Speech Accent Archive is an absolutely fascinating collection from George Mason University. They have gathered 440 audio samples of persons from around the world reading a passage in English. Here is the passage:

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

You can listen to that read by everyone from an Afrikaans speaker from Pretoria to a Zulu speaker from Zimbabwe! Most languages have more than one sample; the English list is the longest with 113 different recordings. Most samples also include an IPA transcription.

I did notice a conspicuous omission from this project, though: deaf individuals reading the passage. I sent an e-mail to the comments address suggesting that they obtain samples from deaf Americans, including some who are native speakers of ASL and others whose native language is English. (They could theoretically expand beyond the United States with this, but to do so would risk duplicating the entire globe under that section, so keeping it to the U.S. seems reasonable.)

Added: He wrote back right away!

yes. an excellent idea. if you can sent us some good recordings, we
would be happy to post them.

So now I just need to find deaf people who are willing to record themselves reading that passage. Sure, that’s easy…anybody want to volunteer?