Empowering Tech's Scanning Pens win Queen’s Award for Enterprise

A group photo of many Scanning Pens employees in a landscaped garden. In front of the crowd stand High Sheriff Tony Morris-Eyton, Jack Churchill, Toby Sutton, and Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire, Anna Turner, all in smart formal wear.

WESTBURY, WILTSHIRE— Empowering Tech's EdTech heroes Scanning Pens have been recognised for their outstanding successes in the field of international trade with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

Created in 2003 by Oxford Brookes graduates Jack S. Churchill and Toby Sutton, Scanning Pens are a dedicated EdTech company supplying text-to-speech devices to people with dyslexia, as well as raising awareness of dyslexia worldwide and supporting people whose daily lives are impacted by literacy differences.

Scanning Pens devices represent a huge quality-of-life change for neurodivergent people, and work by allowing users to scan through and listen to texts via an audio feedback system. Removing the need for in-person readers and modified texts, they make reading an independent act, and help people who struggle with reading able to engage with texts in the same way that a neurotypical person might. From working through a history exam or reading the latest bestsellers to the day-to-day admin tasks of running a business, their devices are designed to make reading accessible and simple, so that users can focus on what matters.

As a business, Scanning Pens have dedicated the past twelve months to supporting young people and adults with dyslexia and literacy differences who have been so affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. As well as offering free trials of their technology to schools, they offer the scheme to colleges, universities and other educational establishments so that they can see the benefits for themselves before they buy.

Empowering Tech founders Toby Sutton and Jack Churchill holding a decorative glass award, with Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire Anna Turner to the right.

The Queen’s Award is appointed for sustained achievement by UK businesses in the categories of Innovation, International Trade, Sustainable Development, and Promoting Business via Social Mobility. Now in its 55th year, the programme is considered one of the highest awards for business in the country. Scanning Pens, too, are no stranger to the prestigious recognition of international business growth: in March 2021 the Department for International Trade recognised their outstanding international sales and named them Export Champions for the third year running.

Socially distant living has created uncertain times in education that Scanning Pens continues to support people through. The recognition of a dedicated assistive technology business by an office as prestigious as the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise is a statement on the growing worldwide commitment to accessibility. It also promotes a powerful message on how vital it is to consider inclusivity during a time when business and education are engaged in a rapid process of change and adapting to a very different set of global norms.

Empowering Tech and Scanning Pens CEO Jack S. Churchill had this to say on the award:

“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.”