WESTBURY-based accessibility tech company Scanning Pens Ltd has been honoured for its outstanding year of international trade by one of the nation’s highest awards for enterprise, the Queen’s Award for International Trade.

Created in 2003 by Oxford Brookes graduates Jack Churchill (CEO) and Toby Sutton (COO), Scanning Pens is a dedicated global EdTech business providing reading

support to students with reading difficulties.

The company, whose head office is at Heywood House, also has a facility at Telford in the West Midlands, where it collaborates with the University of Wolverhampton.

Chief executive officer Jack Churchill said: “To be recognised by the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise is the highest honour in business.

“We’re thrilled that our dedication to literacy and reading accessibility has been acknowledged in such a way that celebrates the commitment of everybody here at Scanning Pens.”

Scanning Pens devices represent a huge quality-of-life change for people with dyslexia, and work by allowing users to scan through and listen to texts via an audio feedback system.

The company’s assistive

technology has been integrated into schools across all ages, aiding dyslexics and English language learners.

Its ExamReader and ReaderPen scanning pen devices allow students to be supported in a classroom without the need of a human reader. They are designed to make reading accessible and simple, so that users can focus on what matters.

As a multi-national business, Scanning Pens has dedicated the past 12 months to exploring what new opportunities it can offer to people with dyslexia and literacy differences during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as continuing to support the markets that rely on its award-winning text-to-speech technology.

The last three years has seen a significant increase in the company’s overseas markets growing from one UK office and 10 UK staff, to two UK offices, and one office each in USA, Australia, Canada, and India with more than 80 staff around the world.

In the past three years, sales have grown by 216 per cent and the percentage of sales exported has also grown from 44 per cent to 60 per cent.

With rapid post-Brexit expansion in the first and second quarter in Europe, the pandemic has seen the EdTech boom going truly global – and Scanning Pens are dedicated to sharing their innovation with the world.

Scanning Pens is no stranger to the prestigious recognition of international business growth: in March 2020 the Department of International Trade recognised its outstanding international sales by naming the company Export Champions for the second year running.

Mr Sutton said: “Scanning Pens’ success is representative of a paradigm shift in the global business landscape towards a greater consideration of neurodiversity in arenas like the workplace and the education system.

“This recent focus on creating the inclusive environments where people with ADHD, dyslexia, autism and other neurodiversity’s can thrive is a cause for celebration.

“A dedicated accessibility company being recognised by an institution as prestigious as the Queen’s Award is not only a step toward inclusivity, but a rallying point in a business world that’s beginning to recover from the strain of the pandemic living and looking forward to the positive changes on the horizon of a post-Covid economy.”