The Sterling Creations summer 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 second quarter
4 Sterling services
5 List of blogs
6 Contact info
*****
Message from the president
Dear readers:
Ah yes! Summer is here and I hope that wherever you are, this great season is being
kind to you.
The second quarter for Sterling Creations was a very interesting, challenging, and
opportunistic one for us. We were able to continue our pace and in turn our clients
continued to be our main supporters.
I'd like to thank them for this and to you our readers; thank you for your continuing
interest in Sterling Creations. I invite you now to read our second quarter in review.
With very best wishes
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
-
web
support
for
www.sterlingcreations.ca
www.sterlingcreations.com 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
Heather Rupert – Facebook support
and
Ron Pelletier - social media support
Imran Ingar – technical support
The folks at MIAD – technical support
Larry Lewis JR – advertising support for Author Donna Jodhan
Dan Jellinek – advertising support for Author Donna Jodhan
Vashaun Jones – Marketing support for Author Donna Jodhan
Blair Stainton – producer of our audio mysteries
Oliver Turner - producer of our audio mysteries
Kim Kilpatrick - audio mysteries collaboration
*****
The second quarter in review
The second quarter was a very interesting one for us with lots of activity taking place.
We continued to service our clients across North America in the areas of writing,
research, and accessibility.
Our writing team continued to churn out blogs, editorials, articles, and newsletters while
our research team started into a brand new project; this being to do research on a
variety of topics. They are presently heavily engaged in the research of 45 different
topics and they will be passing their research onto our writing team and in turn the
writers will develop articles which will be used to engage Google to place ads on a
website called www.callingallquestions.
com.
This is going to be a very exciting new venture for both researchers and writers and it is
hoped that this website will go live in the early fall. We thank our client for having
engaged us to be a part of this exciting initiative.
The writers also continued to provide support for our work with Lori Motis at
www.theblindpost.com. Our president presently writes a monthly article under the title
"from the pages of Donna's diary" for Lori Motis and we thank Lori for giving us this
great opportunity to work with her.
Not to be outdone, our accessibility team continued its work in the areas of user testing
and evaluation and provided support to our president Donna Jodhan in the writing and
editing of her blogs as well as with her work with Accessible Media Inc.
In addition, this team continued to provide services to clients across North America and
the UK.
All three teams; writers, researchers, and accessibility consultants continued to provide
internal support for all of our websites. These being:
www.sterlingcreations.ca, www.sterlingcreations.com, and www.donnajodhan.com.
Our unstoppable president continued her various advocacy campaigns. She traveled to
Halifax in early May where she attended the AGM of the Alliance for Equality of Blind
Canadians (AEBC). Since then she has been asked to be the AEBC's rep to the Canadian
Human Rights Commission and to Media Access Canada.
Donna also continued her work with Accessible Media Inc as a columnist on AMI's
weekly show called "Insights" and she wishes to thank her producer Jason Vermes for
helping to make her work experience a very enjoyable one.
Each week Donna is interviewed by Jason on a different topic ranging in content from
anything in the kitchen to what's going on in the news as it pertains to advocacy issues
for blind persons.
Topics have ranged from problems at the Greater Toronto Airport and challenges on
cruises to what's going on in the kitchen, challenges with point of sale devices, and
commercials with no audio descriptions.
Through out the second quarter Donna also continued her break neck pace with the
Barrier Free Canada committee as they gear up for the forthcoming Canadian Federal
Elections. The lofty objective of this committee is to lobby the next Canadian Parliament
to enact a Canadians Disabilities Act.
It is expected that the next elections will be held no later than October 19. Canada is
one of the very few developed countries that does not have any sort of disabilities rights
legislation in place.
Thus far, Donna and her committee have managed to secure the support of:
CNIB, March of Dimes, the MS Society of Canada, the Canadian Hearing Society, and
Accessible Media Inc. These five organizations make up the founding organizations of
this initiative.
In addition, Barrier Free Canada - Canada sans Barrières has also managed to procure
the support of:
The Canadian Council of the Blind, the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians,
Communication Disabilities Access Canada, the Québec Federation of the Blind, the West
Island users group of Montreal, The Coalition of Persons with Disabilities - NL, and SPH
Associates of Toronto.
The Barrier Free Canada - Canada sans Barrières Committee has also managed to snag
the services of Stephen Trumper. MR. Trumper is a well known editor, teacher, writer,
and marketer. Among his many awards are:
Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement, the National Magazine Awards
Foundation: June 2013
Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for Public Service: June 2012
The BCF – CSB committee also welcomed MR. Leo Bissonnette to its team. Leo is a well
known advocate within our blind community and has held esteemed positions with
Concordia University of Montreal where he worked as head of the special needs
department of said University. Leo is well known for his tireless work in the field of
education.
Leo presently serves as a director on the board of the AEBC responsible for CRTC issues
and he chairs the scholarship committee.
As a Federal Election looms closer, you can be sure that Barrier Free Canada - Canada
sans Barrières will be stepping up its efforts.
We encourage you to visit
www.barrierfreecanada.org to learn more and to sign up to support us and you can do
so by visiting the support us page.
Finally: Author Donna Jodhan has also been quite active with her initiatives. She is
pleased to announce that in late September she will be teaming up with Alexis
Fabricious a well known Toronto based
self defense instructor and the CNIB to present a jam packed workshop.
This workshop will focus on:
Talking about ways to use soft and hard techniques to defend one’s self as a blind
person, and techniques will be demonstrated.
The theme of the workshop will be using these techniques to protect one's self from
bullying; one of author Donna's pet initiatives.
Author Donna thanks Len Baker and Sue Marsh-woods of the CNIB for their
collaboration along with her associate Alexis Fabricious.
Towards the end of the second quarter, author Donna Jodhan teamed up with Vashaun
Jones of Fedora Outlier LLC to restructure the marketing of her audio mysteries. Some
exciting stuff is happening and you'll have to wait for our next newsletter to learn more.
Author Donna is also planning to complete an Apple certification that will enable her to
provide training to blind persons wishing to use MAC computers and she thanks Vashaun
Jones for offering this opportunity to her.
So what's on the drawing board for the third quarter? We can hardly wait to share with
you in our next newsletter but suffice it to say that you cannot miss it!
Adventures for author Donna Jodhan, for our president with her Barrier Free Canada Canada sans Barrières committee and of course!
More high jumps for our Sterling
Creations team!
In the meantime, we wish you a terrific summer and success in all that you do.
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!
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