VITAC
VITAC is the largest provider of closed captioning in the country, responsible for captioning over 300,000 live-program hours per year (over 600 hours per day), and creating verbatim, precisely timed captions for 57,000 pre-recorded programs per year. Their customers include every major network, most cable channels, program producers, corporations, government agencies, and more. The company is headquartered in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
History
VITAC was founded in 1986 by two men with one big idea: produce the best-quality realtime captions for viewers who rely on captions. Fast-forward 30 years, and that big idea is still the same, with more services and customers growing year after year, providing VITal ACcess with media solutions for every industry from web captioning to Spanish subtitling to audio description.
Events and milestones
- 1986 – VITAC gets its first contract captioning Pittsburgh's KDKA nightly news broadcast.
- 1988 – VITAC becomes first to caption both Republican and Democratic National Conventions.
- 1990 – VITAC captions its first national news program, The Today Show.
- 1992 – VITAC begins captioning The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
- 1993 – CNN becomes a client of VITAC.
- 1994 – VITAC begins to provide round-the-clock captioning for NBC during the O.J. Simpson investigation and trial throughout 1994 and 1995.
- 1995 – ABC becomes a client of VITAC.
- 1997 – Fox Sports Networks become clients of VITAC.
- 2000 – VITAC helps customers prepare for new U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandates related to captioning.
- 2003 – VITAC introduced multilanguage subtitling department, providing translation and subtitling in over 50 languages.
- 2004 – Discovery Communications's 14 television networks becomes clients of VITAC.
- 2005 – VITAC becomes the exclusive captioning provider for The Weather Channel.
- 2006 – VITAC begins offering real-time, simultaneous captioning for sporting events, in English and Spanish.
- 2007 – VITAC offers real-time captioning, special report coverage and customer support to NBC news programs, 10 NBC O&Os and Telemundo.
- 2008 – VITAC provides Spanish captioning for TruTV.
- 2009 – VITAC begins captioning for NHK, the Japanese broadcast network, as well as HRTV and Zuffa
- 2010 – VITAC adds QVC to list of exclusive captioned networks.
- 2012 - VITAC captions the 2012 London Olympic Games in both English and Spanish.
- 2012 - VITAC joins forces with Los Angeles-based captioning and audio description provider Closed Captioning Servies (CCS).[1]
- 2014 - VITAC is chosen by NBCUniversal as the exclusive caption provider of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games.[2]
- 2016 - VITAC transitions to new owner, The Gores Group.[3]
- 2016 - VITAC is chosen by NBCUniversal as the exclusive caption provider of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.[4]
Community
In 2008, VITAC launched CaptionsON, a public information campaign detailing the benefits of closed captioning. The website associated with the campaign provides advice to viewers with caption problems and contact information for many networks.
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.[5] 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).[6]
See also
References
- ↑ http://www.ccscaption.com/about-us/
- ↑ http://vitac.com/olympics/
- ↑ "VITAC Announces New Ownership | VITAC Captions and Subtitles". www.vitac.com. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
- ↑ "VITAC Prepares to Caption the 2016 Olympic Games | VITAC Captions and Subtitles". www.vitac.com. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
- ↑ "Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology". Coataccess.org. Retrieved 2011-09-21.
- ↑ "VITAC Blog". Vitac.com. Retrieved 2011-09-21.