VITAC

VITAC is the United States’ largest closed captioning company. Their services include providing live and offline captioning, Spanish captioning, subtitling, audio description, and encoding for media and entertainment companies, Broadcast networks, government agencies, and educational institutions. VITAC has over 700 employees, 1,700 clients, and captions over 550,000 live and 75,000 prerecorded hours of programming per year.[1]

VITAC was incorporated in March 1986 in Pittsburgh as American Data Captioning, Inc. It sold services under the name CaptionAmerica, and in 1993 changed its name to VITAC, an acronym for “VITal ACcess,” which refers to all services that make mass media accessible.

VITAC has been continuously providing closed captioning services since 1986. In 2000, VITAC was sold to Word Wave, Inc. In 2006, Word Wave, Inc. was acquired by Merrill Corporation. In August 2012, VITAC acquired Closed Captioning Services.

In 2016 The Gores Group, a global private equity firm specializing in acquiring and partnering with mature and growing businesses, acquired VITAC. Gores’ current portfolio, as of 2015, includes technology, telecommunications, business services, industrial, healthcare, media & entertainment and consumer products companies. Since 1987, Gores has acquired and operated more than 80 companies worldwide.[2]

In 2017, VITAC acquired Caption Colorado, which was founded in 1991 and expanded to become the second-largest captioning company in the United States with a focus on regional and local newscasts.

VITAC operates out of offices in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and Greenwood Village, Colorado, as well as the hundreds of home offices of realtime captioners all over the country.

VITAC is a member of the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology, COAT, and a coalition of over 240 national, regional, state, and community-based disability organizations. COAT advocates for legislative and regulatory safeguards that will ensure full access by people with disabilities to evolving high speed broadband, wireless and other Internet Protocol (IP) technologies. Part of this initiative is the introduction of new legislation, HR3101.[3] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has appointed three VITAC employees to serve a two-year term on the Video Programming and Emergency Access Advisory Committee (VPEAAC), an advisory committee required by the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (the Accessibility Act).[4]

• Closed captioning
• Subtitling
• Post Production