More News

Starting a business in itself is a daunting enough task, with hurdles such as acquiring funds, paying taxes, meeting payroll, finding clients and learning the ropes. In fact, at least one-third of new small businesses fail in their first two years and more than half in their first four years, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Add to that being deaf, emigrating from another nation and having to learn English, and you will begin to understand what John T.C. Yeh has overcome in leading the impressive growth of several Rockville businesses.

Yeh said he felt he had little choice but to take the entrepreneurial route, after being turned down for numerous jobs in the 1970s, despite earning a master's in computer sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a bachelor's in mathematics from Gallaudet University.

He was often told that his lack of English skills was the key factor blocking suitable employment, but Yeh also thought being deaf played a role. He finally found a job as a computer programmer back at Gallaudet, the Washington university that specializes in education for deaf people, but yearned for something more.

"Many companies then couldn't deal with someone with a disability in the workplace," said Yeh, 61, speaking through sign language and an interpreter in his Rockville office that contains a wall full of awards from President Reagan, the SBA and others. "A lot of people with a disability have potential and can contribute. Many businesses didn't understand that [decades ago], but more have become open-minded."

Besides growing businesses, Yeh has been instrumental in starting and furthering organizations that advocate for the deaf community, such as the National Asian Deaf Congress and National Deaf Business Institute.

He was a trustee at Gallaudet for more than a decade and is chairman of its Board of Associates, which builds relationships with business and philanthropic leaders. Deaf Life, a monthly national magazine founded in 1987, plans to honor Yeh as Deaf Person of the Year next month.

The Gazette this year named Yeh one of the "25 CEOs You Need to Know," and his present company, Viable Inc., was named one of the Exceptional 53 businesses and nonprofits by The Gazette of Politics and Business.

Viable is a "shining example of an enterprise that demonstrates every day that a disability is only a disability in the eyes of those that cannot see clearly," James R. Macfadden, a Gallaudet trustee who is deaf and has known Yeh for about three decades, wrote in an e-mail. "Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Everyone needs to find a way to overcome deficiencies. The deaf do so better than many others."

In 1986, Macfadden founded Macfadden & Associates, a Silver Spring information technology contractor that has annual revenues of about $12 million. Last year, he completed the transition to making it an employee-owned company and has essentially retired.

Macfadden, chairman of Gallaudet's Presidential Search Advisory Committee and formerly president of the National Deaf Business Institute, said he did not know of any other for-profit, deaf-owned companies of the magnitude of Viable, "with such a large contingent of deaf and hard-of-hearing employees."

According to new Census data released Thursday, among Americans 15 and older, 7.8 million, or 3 percent, have difficulty hearing a normal conversation, including 1 million who are unable to hear at all.

Not an easy life

Even at birth in Taiwan in the 1940s, Yeh faced significant obstacles. Many in his home nation considered deaf people to be not worth educating — and worse, he said.

"The education was not good for deaf children in Taiwan then," Yeh said. "My father was a civil engineer and visited the United States. He saw that the education for deaf children was much better here."

The family moved to Brazil — from where it was easier to immigrate to the U.S. — when he was 12 and lived there three years before settling in this country. Yeh graduated from the Kendall School for the Deaf in Washington, then Gallaudet and the University of Maryland.

In his programmer job at Gallaudet, he said he revised the old computerized system of manual punch cards, developing a quicker way to gather information, a method that he would later use in his own business.

Seeing greater opportunities outside the university, Yeh formed software engineering and integration company Integrated Microcomputer Systems in Rockville with the help of brothers James, Jeffrey and Joseph — and an SBA loan — in 1979. Just making a simple sales-pitch phone call posed a significant challenge early in his career, a situation he also later addressed in his own business by developing products to help deaf people communicate more easily, such as through video technology.

"People hung up on me a lot," Yeh said.

He got past the hang-ups to obtain 8(a) federal contracting certification for his company, a key factor in Integrated growing from a handful of employees to 550 at its peak. Its clients included the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, NASA, the Pentagon and the Department of Justice. Revenues hit $20 million by 1988 and $40 million by 1995.

In 1988, the SBA named Yeh its Washington regional Small Business Person of the Year, and he finished second behind only Vermont ice cream moguls Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield nationally. At the time, Integrated employed 150 more people than Ben & Jerry's, according to an SBA news release. Yeh and his business won other awards, including from KPMG Peat Marwick, Arthur Young Inc. and the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.

In 1996, Yeh sold Integrated to Arlington, Va., information technology contractor CACI International.

"I could have retired then if I wanted," Yeh said. "But my investments went down by 2001, and I could not afford to rely on those."

Another Viable company

With the adoption of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, services for deaf people had increased greatly. Yeh worked to help get deaf organizations going in the 1990s but wanted to do more from a corporate setting.

In 2001, Yeh launched Viable Technologies to focus on real-time transcription services for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in educational settings. In 2005, he and his son, Jason, then a programmer with the company and now a vice president, traveled to New Orleans for a conference on telecommunications issues affecting deaf and hard-of-hearing people. During the flight home, the Yehs discussed how a videophone developed for hearing-impaired people could improve communication.

A few months later, Yeh formed Viable Inc. to expand the products to text and video relay services that can be used in homes, offices and elsewhere. The companies are separate, but executives plan to merge them after integrating real-time captioning with video relay services.

Viable Inc. started out developing back-end technologies for a company that had call centers handling the video relay calls, where hearing-impaired people use video technology to connect to an interpreter who then calls the other party. Yeh moved those call centers in-house, speeding employment growth.

Viable is a unique company that is making a difference in society, said Deborah Gunter, CEO of Sign Shares, a Houston provider of comprehensive sign language interpreting services. Viable and Sign Shares partnered this year to open a video relay call center in Houston.

Viable has other call centers run either by itself or in partnership in Rockville, Ellicott City, Frederick, Towson, New York, California and Texas.

"We here at Sign Shares are constantly amazed at how the technology developed by Viable fits cultural norms, fits what real people communicate in the real world," Gunter said.

"By using interpreters, real people communicate with each other in the most natural way, between different and distinct cultures, as seamlessly as possible. … Hardware and software developers are deaf, or they work side by side with people who are deaf, so they are constantly making adjustments to systems, perfecting the technology."

The partnership is a "perfect match" that has worked well, she said. "Mr. Yeh has put his money where his heart is and everyone has been rewarded for it," Gunter said. "Sign Shares has a similar ideology. We stand with Mr. Yeh and his excellent team in bringing the world an opportunity to interact with family, friends, co-workers and customers."

Growth in a recession

In three years, Viable Inc. has shot up from a handful of people to about 150 full-time and 45 part-time employees. A good part of Viable's growth came during this past recessionary year.

Yeh's secret? Nothing complex: hard work, persistence, hiring good people and staying focused on goals. Twelve- to 14-hour days and weekends at the office are not uncommon.

"The company is still fairly new. We have to be careful about what we do," said Yeh, who has three children. One daughter, Mei, also works for his company, as does his brother Joseph, who is a vice president. His other daughter, Ming, works for the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

Viable's competitors in the video relay services business include Sorenson Communications in Salt Lake City, which had sales of $231 million last year, according to business information company Hoover's. Viable's revenue last year was $7 million, and the company expects to more than double that this year, said spokesman Glenn Lockhart.

More than half of Viable's executive team is deaf, and about 90 percent of employees know sign language, Lockhart said.

"That's the language of our business," he said through an interpreter, during a recent tour of the company's new headquarters near the White Flint Metro station to which Viable is in the process of moving. Deaf people from other countries often visit Viable to see how the company operates, Lockhart said.

Viable has invested in speedier servers and software to get faster video relay sessions. Its products include the VPAD, developed by Jason Yeh and a college friend, Larwan Berke.

The wireless videoconferencing device, which retails for $699, has its camera and screen in a trim, portable unit that doesn't need to be plugged into a computer or television like many competing products. The company has a newer version, the VPAD+, which adds enhancements such as built-in Wi-Fi capability and improved touchscreen functions.

Robert Esposito, who is deaf and the owner of Abbondanza Pizzeria in Seattle, said in a statement that Viable's VPAD has helped him with his business. "I set up my VPAD in my restaurant and started informing deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the Seattle area that they could use their videophones to call in their orders," Esposito said.

Yeh believes such products can be utilized beyond the hearing-impaired community. "Hospitals have been interested," he said.

But he remains committed to the company's primary focus.

"The quality of life for deaf people depends greatly on the quality of communication," Yeh said.

John T.C. Yeh

-Age: 61

-Birthplace: Tainan, Taiwan

-Residence: Potomac

-Career: President and CEO,

Viable Inc., Rockville, 2005-present; president, Viable Technologies,

2001-present; president, Integrated Microcomputer Systems, Rockville, 1979-96

-Family: Wife, Mary; children, Mei, Ming and Jason

-Education: University of Maryland, College Park, master's in computer sciences, 1973; Gallaudet University, Washington; bachelor's in mathematics, 1971