Case Study: CALL Scotland achieves accessible curriculum and student independence with ABBYY FineReader

ABBYY FineReader Answers the Call to Help Students with Learning Challenges

CALL Scotland, a unit within the Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, supports Scottish students with physical, communication or sensory difficulties who struggle to access standard curriculum materials. The Scottish Government asked CALL to map demand for accessible books and identify cost‑effective, scalable technology solutions; the resulting "Books for All" project found thousands of pupils lacked digital, readable versions of texts and that scanned paper material would need reliable OCR to unlock content for reuse.

CALL chose ABBYY FineReader to convert scans and PDFs into editable formats, trained school staff to use the software, and produced a wide range of accessible outputs (Large Print, adapted print, Braille, audio/Daisy, PDF, Word, eBook). The digitisation of SQA exam papers in particular increased student independence and confidence, reduced staffing and costs for examinations, and drove rapid adoption (requests for digital papers doubled year‑on‑year, reaching 1,962 in 2010); CALL is now expanding tools and a shared database with government support.

CALL Scotland

Paul Nisbet

Senior Research Fellow