I wish a more "democratic" printing technology had been developed earlier that would be equally useful for all languages. This way it would be more quickly adopted throughout the world. Europe probably missed out on movable type because would be interlopers like the Arabs found the technology of limited use to them.
The great equalizer was lithography, which was technologically doable since ancient times. There's no reason, say the Romans, couldn't invent it. Even cheaper and simpler is silkscreen printing, which despite being invented by the Chinese during the Song dynasty, some how failed to take a simple step forward to print words. Today of course screen printing is used for printing on every surface imaginable since it's so versatile. You don't even need paper - cloth, parchment, ceramic, metal, screen printing works for everything.
Not only would lithography and screen printing print words, they could also duplicate graphics. With movable type press you still need wood block or etching to handle illustrations. Litho and screen could do both with the same tools. Pictures as they say are worth a thousand words.