Case Study: University of Zurich achieves digital access to handwritten survey data with Acodis

Enabling New Insights with the Help of Intelligent Document Processing

The University of Zurich’s Institute of Educational Sciences needed to extract information from 12,200 handwritten statistical survey forms from 1935–1969 for its “Education in Numbers” research project. To tackle this large archival dataset, the institute worked with Acodis using Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), data extraction, and a custom web editor.

Acodis built an automated digitization solution that handled the five form layouts and varying handwriting, while also making validation and correction easy through the web editor. As a result, the project team saved countless hours of manual processing, and the historical data was made available in digital form for future research.

University of Zurich

Stefan Kessler

Operational Project Management