It seems the docstring of Reader class is wrong. There are no longer scan() method.
class Reader(Component):
"""
Abstract base class for docutils Readers.
Each reader module or package must export a subclass also called 'Reader'.
The two steps of a Reader's responsibility are `scan()` and
`parse()`. Call `read()` to process a document.
"""
I don't know parse() is a responsibility of Reader. But it should be updated.
Fixed in r8237. Thanks for reporting.