Madison phone captioning firm to lay off nearly 300 Wisconsin employees

Ultratec Inc., a Madison-based company that provides captioned telephone services for people with hearing loss, plans to lay off hundreds of employees from its CapTel Inc. unit, citing the release of a new technology it developed that provides customers with a choice of receiving captions through a fully-automated auto caption system. According to a letter filed with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, CapTel anticipates laying off approximately 28 employees at its facility located at 450 Science Drive in Madison and another approximately 245 employees at its facility located at 301 W. Wisconsin Ave. in Milwaukee. The majority of the employees being laid off are captioning assistants, and the layoffs are expected to be permanent. The layoffs are set to begin on Sept. 20.