The Sterling Creations winter 2015 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 year in review - 2015
4 Sterling services
5 List of blogs
6Contact info
*****
Message from the president
Happy New Year everyone and I'd like to start by wishing everyone the very best for
2016. I hope that yours was a really great Christmas holiday season just gone by.
I know that this year is going to be a tough one for many of us including Sterling
Creations but it is my hope that we will all be able to weather the storms as they pass
through our neck of the woods.
2015 has been a very interesting year for our company but at the end of it all we have
managed to continue to hold our heads above water and I'd like to thank my team for
all of their hard work. Above all, I thank you our customers for your continuing support.
I now invite you to share our year in review and I look forward to continuing to serve
you. If you have any feedback to share then please do not hesitate to send along to
info@sterlingcreations.ca.
Yours sincerely,
Donna J. Jodhan
President Sterling Creations
*****
Acknowledgements
Sterling Creations would like to thank the following persons:
Aaron Di Blasi - web developer for www.donnajodhan.com
Frances
Moffat
-
www.sterlingcreations.com
web
support
for
www.sterlingcreations.ca
and
And support for Linkedin
Sambhavi Chandrashekar - Linkedin support
Jamie Brown of Lumasis - website hosting
Dee Scott - blog support for www.donnajodhan.blogspot.com
Dena Patrick – technical support for Facebook and Twitter
Imran Ingar – technical support
The folks at MIAD – technical support
Vashaun
Jones
–
Marketing
support
for
Author
Donna
Jodhan
and
www.jodhanmysterybook.club
Mike
Babcock
–
Twitter
support
for
www.donnajodhan.com
and
www.jodhanmysterybook.club
Blair Stainton – producer of our audio mysteries
Oliver Turner - producer of our audio mysteries
*****
The year in review – 2015
The year 2015 was a very busy year for both Sterling Creations and for our president. A
lot was accomplished with regard to continuing to support our clients across North
America and beyond and we managed to expand our database by picking up a few new
clients in North America.
Our writing and research teams continued to be very busy in their respective roles;
providing
content
to
www.sterlingcreations.com,
our
major
websites
www.sterlingcreations.ca,
www.donnajodhan.blogspot.com,
and
www.donnajodhan.com.
They provided blogs, editorials, and newsletters to all of these websites. We expanded
our band of websites to include www.jodhanmysterybook.club and we began work on a
new website called www.callingallquestions.com. We are hoping to have this website up
and running early in this year. Stay tuned for more on this initiative.
Our teams also continued to support our president in her initiatives with Accessible
Media Inc; the Insights show that ended in the summer and the How it works show that
started up in the fall. Donna is very grateful for having had the opportunity to work
with Jason Vermes on the former and is delighted to be working with Bill Shackleton,
Paula Dineen, and producers Victoria and Daniel on the latter.
She also thanks John Melville and Joe Lamanna for having given her this opportunity.
The Insights show featured Jason interviewing Donna on a wide variety of challenges
facing blind persons in their daily lives and the How it works show focuses on providing
solutions to some very routine challenges in the lives of blind persons.
Author Donna Jodhan continued her relentless work with her campaign against bullying
and out of this came the inauguration of the www.jodhanmysterybook.club website. We
encourage you to visit this website to see how she has expanded her campaign and
what she is doing to encourage others to join her or develop their own campaign.
We have teamed up with Mike Babcock to help us find ways to market Donna’s
Campaign against bullying on a wider basis; through social media and through podcasts.
Mike is a well known social media marketer based in the United States.
We also joined forces with Vashaun Jones and the Fedora team and they will be helping
us to push this very important initiative.
Through the development production and
circulation of podcasts and blogs.
In September 2015 Donna teamed up with the CNIB and Alexis Fabricius; a top ranking
Toronto based self defense instructor to present a workshop on the rudiments of self
defense to a group of blind persons in Toronto and plans are now a-foot for Donna to
once more team up with CNIB and CCB to present a murder mystery evening that will
hopefully take place in early March.
In May Donna was interviewed by Vashaun Jones for one of his shows and the interview
focused on her advocacy work and in August and October Donna appeared on
Vashaun's tele town halls.
At the end of April 2016, Donna has been invited to speak at a Georgia Coalition
conference in the United States and her topic will focus on a brand new initiative that
she and others are working on called the DOT COM initiative.
In conjunction with
Fedora, plans are moving along for the initiation and setting up of a very unique type of
program that will hopefully pilot in the US in the coming months.
In the late summer of 2015 Donna began producing biweekly blogs for the GTT group.
Gtt or Getting together with Technology is a coast to coast organization that brings blind
persons face to face with technology. Donna has been invited to make a presentation
on low level technology to the Toronto chapter of GTT in February.
Donna thanks Kim Kilpatrick for giving her this unique opportunity to be a part of a very
dynamic team.
In early 2015 our unstoppable president along with others launched Barrier Free Canada
- Canada sans Barrières. A non partisan grass roots organization that is heavily involved
in lobbying the Canadian Government to enact a Canadians With Disabilities Act. To
date, over 20 provincial and national organizations have signed up to support this great
initiative.
Thousands of persons from coast to coast are now supporting BFC-CSB on social media
as well as by having signed up as yes supporters on the BFC-CSB website and in
addition three of the four Federal parties have signed on to push the initiative.
The Toronto City Council has also thrown its support behind BFC-CSB but most
importantly the Trudeau Government has committed to passing legislation to enact a
Canadians with disabilities Act.
In late September and again in November, Donna was interviewed by Ain Wilson of the
Insight Radio station of the RNIB where she talked about the BFC-CSB initiative. IE,
how and why it was formed and its progress thus far in its attempts to convince the
Canadian Parliament to enact a Canadians with disabilities Act.
Donna and her committee are extremely grateful to everyone and thanks the five
founding organizations for helping to kick start everything. These organizations are:
CNIB, MS Society of Canada, March of Dimes, Canadian hearing Society of Canada, and
Accessible Media Inc.
The steering committee is made up of:
Donna Jodhan; founder and co-chair. David Lepofsky; co-chair. Jutta Treviranus, Marc
Workman, Steven Christianson, and Robert Pearson.
You can visit www.barrierfreecanada.org and read the founding principles of this
organization.
Additionally see who is supporting and which provinces have become
affiliates.
2016 is going to be a very busy year for BFC-CSB as they continue their up hill task to
make it all happen. They are confident that they will be able to make this a reality in
time for Canada's 150th anniversary on July 01 2017.
Through out 2015, Donna continued her work with the Elections Canada advisory group
on accessibility issues. The committee met in April 2015 in Ottawa for a two day session
and they discussed ways to bring more publicity to the Elections Canada initiatives. This
group is scheduled to meet in February 2016 to continue its work.
In the late summer of 2015 Donna was asked to join a CNIB national committee; the
community based support committee.
This is new ground for Donna and she is
extremely excited to be a part of this committee. Donna thanks Jane Beaumont and
Diane Bergeron for having helped to make this happen.
Through out 2015, Donna continued to work on behalf of the Alliance for Equality of
Blind Canadians. In February she helped to organize a coast to coast tele town hall
meeting in conjunction with Accessible Media Inc and this town hall focused on Elections
Canada initiatives.
In late 2015, she worked with the Canadian Human Rights Commission to help organize
a face to face meeting sponsored by the CHRC that will be taking place at the end of
January 2016. This meeting will bring together members from various organizations
within the blind community to discuss ways of closer collaboration and communication.
So what's next on the drawing board for 2016? We can only advise you to wait and see!
In the meantime, we wish you a terrific 2016 and success in all that you do.
With very best wishes
The Sterling Creations team
*****
Sterling Services
OUR ACCESSIBILITY SERVICES
Meet our accessibility team!
Made up of a hard working group of very dedicated
professionals.
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.
In
addition, they offer services to help you improve your phone conversation.
Some of their tasks include:
Translation.
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/askanexpert.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
Ask an author:
http://www.sterlingcreations.ca/askanauthor.html
*****
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
For Author Donna Jodhan: www.donnajodhan.com