The Sterling Creations
Winter 2011 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 The year in review
3 Sterling services
4 List of blogs
5 Contact info
*****
Message from the president
Happy new year one and all and welcome to 2012. I’d like to start by thanking all of our
customers and readers for their continuing support and I and my team are looking
forward to a continuing warm relationship with you.
2011 has been a very interesting year for Sterling Creations; lots of challenges,
successes, excitement, and streamlining.
We have managed to survive most of the
economic dark clouds and our year ended on a very high note. 2012 is shaping up to be
a very exciting one for us but before getting down to business, I’d like to invite you to
read our year in review.
Again, thank you for all of your support and feedback for it is mainly through you and
because of you that we are still here to tell our story.
With very best wishes for a great 2012
Donna J. Jodhan; president Sterling Creations
*****
The year in review
2011 was a challenging one for us but at the end of it all we managed to keep our
heads above water and we ended the year on a very high note.
In 2011, we decided to streamline our business offerings and we did this by revamping
our two major websites and parting with our third one.
First, we revamped our
www.sterlingcreations.ca website, our number one website to promote our accessibility
services and advocacy work. This website now includes our quarterly newsletters, blogs
from our team as well as personal blogs from our president Donna Jodhan, a feature
called ask an expert, plus the latest news on Donna’s tireless advocacy work.
Our
www.sterlingcreations.com website now features our other services; research and
writing. We have decided to offer our translation services only upon request.
We said a sad goodbye to our sister website www.onestopbookcafe.com as we felt that
the time had come for us to retool our services and tighten up our business offerings.
This website fetched a very handsome price on the market. We thank Eric Martin of
Evideo solutions for having helped us with this project.
We also decided to bring our three teams back together as one happy unit and this
helped us to better manage our daily operations. In addition, it enabled us to give
better support and coverage to our president as she continued her unstoppable march.
We continued to produce weekly blogs for the Fredshead blog; sponsored by the
American Printing House for the Blind and we thank Michael McCarty for continuing to
give us this opportunity.
We also continued to produce bimonthly columns for the
Diversity in the Workplace online magazine and we thank Jill Walters for this. Our team
also continued to produce multiple weekly articles for the Avalanche Networks Company,
one of Canada’s top search engine optimization companies. We thank Bruce Lamb for
this opportunity.
We also had an opportunity to produce articles for Dan Jellinek and the E-access bulletin
online news magazine; a British based magazine and in 2011 we wrote the following:
What could the landscape look like for access technology; a 2011 outlook, and blind kids
and technology. We thank Tristan Parker and Dan Jellinek for this opportunity and look
forward to a continuing relationship with the folks at E-access bulletin for 2012.
We also carried out research services for T-Base Communications Inc; an Ottawa based
company specializing in the production of documents and information in alternate
formats and for 2011, we produced reports on the levels of accessibility for some of the
Ontario Government’s websites. We thank Sharlyn Ayotte and Deana White for this
opportunity.
Thanks to the folks at Accessible Media Inc, we made a major break through towards
the end of 2011 as we started to produce audio blogs for them; our president’s personal
views on a plethora of topics. These blogs will consist of one minute audio clips of
Donna Jodhan talking about subjects that will help the sighted world better understand
how blind persons live, work, and enjoy things around them.
In early 2012, our detective show starring our president as Detective DJ is expected to
start running on the Accessible Media Inc’s audio channel. This show titled the crime
crushers will be a weekly half hour mystery show and our president will be the narrator.
Donna is the sole writer and producer of these episodes. We thank Peter Burke, John
Melville, and Joe Lamanna for this terrific opportunity.
Our team continued to work in various capacities with clients across Canada, the United
States, and Britain during 2011. We provided writing, research, accessibility consulting,
and translation services and we dealt mainly with small and medium sized companies
and individuals.
The year began on a shaky note for our president Donna as at the end of January, she
contracted pneumonia while on a ski trip to Colorado and she did not fully recover until
the end of April.
In early February, she attended court as the Canadian Government tried to have parts
of the landmark decision brought down on November 29 2010 overturned but they
failed.
In May, Donna was elected as the first woman president of the Alliance for
Equality of Blind Canadians and in June she was elected to the board of the Canadian
Blind Sports Association as their communications director.
In her presidential campaign speech to the Alliance, Donna promised to increase
communications among members and between the board and members, reach out to
other organizations, and to tackle the Alliance’s financial woes. Among some of her
initiatives, Donna posts a monthly update to members titled talk to the president. She
spearheaded the Alliance’s first town hall meeting on October 29, and has started a
quarterly tele conference meeting with chapter presidents across the country.
The town hall meeting consisted of three sessions; for those calling in through the
Internet, those attending in person, and those attending via phone. The meeting gave
attendees an opportunity to voice their concerns to John Rafferty, president and CEO of
the CNIB on the state of library services in Canada. There were over 100 registered
participants.
In September, Donna submitted an article titled accessible websites to the CCD at the
invitation of Laurie Beachell.
This article was put into a booklet titled 30
accomplishments and highlighted 30 top accomplishments from 1981 to 2011. Donna
Thanks Laurie Beachel for this opportunity.
In September, Donna attended her first meeting of ECAP; the expert consumer advisory
panel sponsored by T-Base Communications. Donna was truly delighted to attend this
meeting in Ottawa and she thanks Sharlyn Ayotte for this opportunity.
In November, Donna attended Federal court as part of the appeal proceedings in the
case Jodhan versus the Attorney General of Canada. The proceedings lasted for two
days and it saw the Canadian government appealing the landmark decision that was
handed down in Donna’s favor on November 29 2010. Donna would like to thank all
those who came out to support her on these two days.
In October and November, Donna granted two audio interviews to Alan Russell of the
Insight radio station; an RNIB sponsored radio station.
In these interviews, Donna
brought British and European listeners up to date on her court case against the
Canadian Government. More interviews are expected as we all await the decision on the
Canadian government’s appeal hearing.
Finally, in late November, Donna was named by the Backbone magazine as one of the
top 15 Canadians in digital media.
president!
Quite an accomplishment for our esteemed
So what’s on the drawing board for Sterling Creations for 2012? A continuation of the
production of blogs, articles, and editorials for our clients.
The production of more
detective shows, expansion of our services to clients in Canada and beyond, and who
knows what else may be around the corner for us! Stay tuned!
*****
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.
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
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
Editorials:
Issues and concerns on diversity in the workplace
http://www.diversityintheworkplace.ca
*****
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