The Sterling Creations summer 2014 newsletter
Hello and welcome to the Sterling Creations newsletter, which is produced quarterly.
We hope that you enjoy it and encourage you to pass it along to those who may be
interested in the types of services that we offer. We welcome your feedback and invite
you to give us your comments for it is only through you and with you that we can
improve our services.
Table of contents
1 Message from the president
2 Acknowledgements
3 The second quarter in review
4 Help stop the spread of crime against innocent victims
5 Sterling services
6 List of blogs
7 Contact info
*****
Message from the president
Dear readers:
Ah yes! Summer is here and I hope that everyone is enjoying this fine warm weather.
It is always a welcomed change whenever we are able to slip away for just a few
months from those cold and freezing temps.
Summer is the time to relax and enjoy pleasant weather, a time to enjoy tall glasses of
cool drinks, and a time to savor those barbecues! I hope that this is exactly what you
are doing at this time and now it is time for me to invite you to read our second quarter
in review. You will see that our second quarter has been a very busy one for us. See
you in the fall!
With very best wishes for a super summer
Donna J. Jodhan
President Sterling Creations
*****
Acknowledgements
Sterling Creations would like to thank the following persons:
Aaron Diblasi - web developer for www.donnajodhan.com
Frances
Moffat
-
web
support
for
www.sterlingcreations.ca
www.sterlingcreations.com
And support for Linkedin
Jamie Brown of Lumasis - website hosting
Dee Scott - blog support for www.donnajodhan.blogspot.com
Dena Patrick – technical support for Facebook
and
Dar Wournell - social media support
Brad Larkin - social media support
Heather Rupert – Facebook exposure support
Imran Ingar – technical support
The folks at MIAD – technical support
Larry Lewis JR – Advertising support for Author Jodhan
Dan Jellinek – Advertising support for Author Jodhan
Blair Stainton – producer of our audio mysteries
Peter Miller – business planning and strategic marketing for audio mysteries
Donna Saccutelli - marketing support
Julie Buelow - marketing support
*****
The second quarter in review
The second quarter for Sterling Creations was an extremely busy one both for our team
as well as for our president Donna J. Jodhan. We continued to provide services to our
clients across North America and Britain and we continued to do this in conjunction with
our business associates.
Our writing and research teams were the busiest and our
accessibility compliance team also managed to keep on working.
Our
team
also
continued
www.sterlingcreations.ca/blog,
to
provide
support
for
our
internal
blogs
www.sterlingcreations.com/businessdesk.htm,
at
and
www.donnajodhan.blogspot.com. In addition, we continued to provide support for the
production of monthly online newsletters at www.donnajodhan.com.
The
writing
team
also
continued
to
provide
editorials
to
the
www.diversityintheworkplace.ca monthly online newsletter, and yes! It is now providing
monthly support for the production of a new feature called "From the pages of Donna's
travel diary" for the folks at www.theblindpost.com.
Lori Motis is the editor of this
monthly online newsletter which boasts an overall subscription of over 1300 subscribers.
We are extremely excited about this and we thank Lori for giving us this opportunity to
write for her newsletter.
Sterling Creations also produced two articles of note for the e access bulletin online
newsletter, a British based entity and the titles of these articles were: Election access at
heart of Canadian disability law campaign and Election Glitches. We thank Dan Jellinek
for having given us the opportunity to write for his magazine.
At the end of June Sterling Creations managed to secure spots for the writing of two
articles for October and November for the American Council of the Blind online magazine
and we will be telling you more about these in our next update. We thank Sharon
Lovering editor of the ACB online magazine for giving us this opportunity to write for this
esteemed magazine.
Our unstoppable president Donna J. Jodhan was up to her usual tricks during the last
quarter as she continued her tireless work to write, record, and give presentations.
In early April she gave a presentation about the journey of her Charter Challenge Victory
to a group of website developers and designers at the Canadian Imperial Bank of
Commerce and at the end of October she will be presenting on the same topic at the
CNIB's annual Braille conference. This is a great opportunity for our president to start
educating others about the true story behind the story.
The CNIB's annual Braille
conference is attended by persons from around the world.
In December 2013 Donna was appointed to the Elections Canada advisory group for
disability issues and to date she has attended two meetings in Ottawa. The first was
held on February 27 and the second was held on June 05. A third meeting is tentatively
scheduled for some time in October or early November.
This committee is made up of nine members representing various organizations of and
for persons with disabilities across Canada and the committee's main function is to
advise and guide Elections Canada on issues pertaining to disability issues and with a
Federal Election looming some time next year; Elections Canada is working very hard to
ensure that some of the more important and outstanding issues for persons with
disabilities are dealt with in a satisfactory manner before said Federal Elections.
Donna also continued to write and record weekly blogs for Accessible Media Inc. She
has been writing and recording three blogs per week and these blogs are a combination
of her personal experiences, some political satire, and issues that are important to the
Blind community. The blogs range in length from 30 to 90 seconds, are recorded at the
Accessible Media Inc studios, and are broadcasted by Accessible Media Inc over their
audio channels.
Donna also continued her commitment to give back by having participated in two
initiatives of students of the Ontario College of Arts and Design. The first was for a
project to help the CRTC develop an online training facility to assist Blind and partially
sighted applicants learn how to file CRTC complaints and the second was for the
submission of a paper to deal with issues within a digital environment.
On May 24 our president participated in a murder mystery evening as part of the Halifax
Chapter of the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians fund raising event.
Donna
adapted one of her audio mysteries for this occasion; the cell phone call. The evening
was a huge success and was given coverage by Accessible Media Inc. The author Donna
Jodhan Detective DJ and the Crime Crushers team is hoping to participate in future
events similar to the one that was held on May 24. One is tentatively scheduled for a
high school audience some time in the fall in Halifax and at a dinner theater event in the
spring of 2015 in Halifax as well.
Donna started a new initiative a few months ago and it all has to do with her continuing
commitment to use her charter challenge victory to keep stirring the pot. She along
with David Lepofsky, Jutta Treviranus, Marc Workman, and Steven Christianson have
formed the Barrier Free Canada Committee and this group has developed a suite of
principles which they have begun to circulate to other organizations and individuals in
order to gain their support to lobby the Federal Government to enact a promised piece
of legislation to deal with disability rights.
This committee will also be lobbying
opposition parties in the coming months. Stay tuned!
Our president also continued to make her contribution to the Alliance for Equality of
Blind Canadians (AEBC). In April she attended the AEBC's AGM in Ottawa and produced
a skit called Court's in Session starring herself as Judge Judy. This was well received.
She also helped to put together an entertainment evening on the opening night.
Donna also continued her work on the virtual wall of fame committee and in early April
she worked with the folks at Accessible Media Inc to put together a town hall meeting
which saw Scott Hutton of the CRTC fielding questions from members of the Blind
community plus other interested parties.
On a more personal note:
Donna has filed two complaints with the Canadian
Transportation agency against the Greater Toronto Airport Authority. The first has to do
with how the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA) deals with Blind and partially
sighted travelers and the second has to do with how security personnel deals with said
travelers. We will update you on this front in our next newsletter.
So what's on the drawing board for the third quarter? Preference will be given to the
continued development of the audio mysteries initiative. More articles and blogs to be
written for our clients. Presentations to be given at various locations and forums. Stay
tuned!
With very best wishes
The Sterling Creations team
*****
Please help stop the spread of crime against innocent victims
This is a personal message from author Donna Jodhan
"If you either are or have been a victim of crime, violence, abuse, or bullying; and if you
are simply tired of being bombarded with audios and scenes of the above, then I am
asking for your support.
I have written and recorded audio mysteries that are
completely void of vivid descriptions of sex, crime, and violence because I firmly believe
that it is time for us to use the spoken word to help influence our kids to start listening
to content that is clean and healthy. By doing this we can all do our part to tackle crime
in a positive and meaningful way and it only costs pennies per day.
Visit my online store at http://www.donnajodhan.com/store.html.
I thank you and your kids will also thank you!"
*****
Sterling Services
OUR ACCESSIBILITY SERVICES
Meet our accessibility team!
professionals.
Made up of a hard working group of very dedicated
This team offers compliance and evaluation services. They can help you to test and
evaluate your websites for W3C compliance. They are experienced at what they do and
some of their tasks include:
Accessible website design and development.
Accessible website testing and evaluation.
Accessible content development.
Creation of user testing, technical support, high level, and detailed evaluation
documents.
Managing of user testing teams.
User and technical support.
Hardware and software evaluations of access technology.
Presentations, seminars, and workshops.
Meet our research services team! Our newest edition.
This team can help you to research info on all kinds of topics. From simple subjects to
the more complicated ones. This team can do it.
At the present time the research team is heavily involved in helping clients to research
info for some very complicated Human Rights cases and in addition, they are assisting
several authors to find ways to market their books.
They also offer their research services to home businesses, small businesses, and to
individuals.
Some of their tasks include:
Researching of requested info.
Producing well-written documents containing the requested info.
This team can carry out Internet, phone, and library research on your behalf.
Meet our writing team! Known as the one stop writing shop.
This team is probably the busiest of our groups. Working with authors, students, and
marketing personnel from companies of all sizes.
Some of their tasks include:
Proofreading and editing.
Copy writing.
Re-writes.
The writing team can help you to enhance and expand your articles, blogs, newsletters,
online magazines, and web content.
They can also help you to write product reviews and for those having problems crafting
their papers in English, they are here to help you edit and format your work.
Meet our translation team! Made up of translators and language coaches.
This team works in English, French, Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin.
They are
heavily involved in the translation of storybooks for kids into several languages.
Their language coaches are also heavily involved in helping business professionals and
new Canadians to become more proficient at writing and speaking English.
Our dynamic team of translators and language coaches can help you to improve and
translate your articles, blogs, emails, faxes, newsletters, and online magazines.
addition, they offer services to help you improve your phone conversation.
Some of their tasks include:
Translation.
In
Language coaching.
Transcription.
Proofreading and editing.
To learn more about our accessibility activities, visit www.sterlingcreations.ca.
To learn more about how you can use our research and writing services to help you be
successful in your endeavors, visit www.sterlingcreations.com.
*****
List of blogs
The following is a list of websites where you can read blogs and editorials written by
Donna J. Jodhan:
Donna Jodhan! Advocating accessibility for all
http://www.donnajodhan.blogspot.com
Sponsored by the American Printing House for the Blind
http://www.fredshead.info
Weekly features on how to increase your success with your business ventures
http://www.sterlingcreations.com/businessdesk.htm
Weekly articles and editorials on issues about accessibility
http://www.sterlingcreations.ca/blog
The latest news about Author Donna Jodhan
http://www.sterlingcreations.ca/news.html
Ask an expert – how you can make your products and services more accessible
http://www.sterlingcreations.ca/sightimpaired.html
Editorials:
Issues and concerns on diversity in the workplace
http://www.diversityintheworkplace.ca
From the pages of Donna’s travel diary
http://www.theblindpost.com
The new and exciting detective series starring Donna Jodhan as detective DJ:
http://www.donnajodhan.com
*****
Contact info
To contact us by email: Please send your email to info@sterlingcreations.ca
To contact us by phone: Please give us a call at (416) 491-7711
Web: www.sterlingcreations.ca