Gary Robson Joins VITAC Captioning Firm

Pittsburgh, PA — July 21, 1998 – VITAC, the nation’s leading captioning company, announced today that Gary Robson has joined the VITAC team.

Robson, with over 10 years of experience in the closed captioning industry and over 20 years of experience in software development will be responsible for evaluating new technologies at VITAC and developing systems including digital technology.

“We are pleased to welcome Gary aboard as VITAC’s Chief Technology Strategist. He brings with him a wealth of experience in many different areas that will be a great asset to VITAC as we prepare to enter the 21st century,” said Joseph R. Karlovits, President of VITAC.

In 1987, Robson founded Cheetah Systems, the nation’s leading provider of real-time captioning software, with his wife, Kathy, who works for VITAC as a stenocaptioner.

Robson was a principal designer for all of Cheetah’s captioning products, and codesigned the industry’s first ergonomic stenotype keyboard. Because of his work on captioning software, he was the 1997 recipient of the Andrew Saks Engineering Award from Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc (TDI) for his “outstanding contribution to improving the visual accessibility of information.”

Robson is a recognized expert in the captioning business, with numerous articles, seminars, and technical papers to his credit. He also is the author of “Inside Captioning,” the definitive book about the captioning industry, and writes a monthly column called “Gary Robson on Captioning” for Newswaves, a newspaper for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Robson has extensive Internet experience as well. He created one of the first captioning-related Web sites, wrote the Caption FAQ on the Internet, and runs a captioning section in CompuServe’s Deaf Forum.

He also set up the groundbreaking real-time captioning of Vice President Al Gore’s speech on CompuServe in 1994, real-time captioning on the Internet for the Discovery Channel in 1995, and real-time captioning on America Online and the World Wide Web in 1996.

Robson’s Internet and software experience will be especially beneficial as VITAC works with Group W Network Services to further develop Global Captions, a new Internet-based, worldwide caption management and delivery service.

“I am extremely pleased to be joining VITAC,” said Robson. “VITAC is moving forward into an era of new technologies, such as DTV, DVD, and Internet-based caption delivery. By working for VITAC, I’ll be a part of setting the future direction of the entire captioning industry.”

VITAC, headquartered in Pittsburgh, with offices in Los Angeles, Washington, DC and Tampa, captions more than 280 hours of programming per week.

The company specializes in the live captioning of syndicated programs, national news programs, sporting events, and other live events; and is an industry leader in the off-line captioning of movies, network and syndicated television series, children’s programming and other programs.

VITAC, headquartered in Pittsburgh, with offices in Los Angeles, Washington, DC and Tampa, captions more than 280 hours of programming per week. The company specializes in the live captioning of syndicated programs, national news programs, sporting events, and other live events; and is an industry leader in the off-line captioning of movies, network and syndicated television series, children’s programming and other programs. VITAC’s facilities are open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. For more information, call 1-800-278-4822 or visit VITAC’s Web site at http://www.vitac.com.