
Categories
- Blogs (5)
- News Release (2)
- Partners (3)
Recent Posts
- Global Grid for LearningJune 23, 2021
- Setting Yourself Apart – Interview StrategyJune 23, 2021
- Setting Yourself Apart – College DNAJune 22, 2021
- Global Grid for Learning
The SAFE Steps has an overriding philosophy for a lot of things we do, and that is we always “begin with the end in mind.” We think that it just makes sense to know where you are going before you start the journey. And that is at the heart of our tagline Dream It – Plan It – Live It.
It is our belief/promise that every student can dream or imagine their ideal life, assemble a plan to achieve it, and then work their plan in order to actually live that life. It takes the right tools, the right process, and the right coaching but it is doable and we’ve seen it happen countless times!
The first step in this journey is a thorough self-assessment. The more you know about yourself the easier it is to figure out the ideal life that you want to live. It’s crucial to know what you’re interested in, what lights you up, what peaks your interest, and of course, what has little or no meaning to you.
Next up is a deep dive into your personality – what kind of person are you? Are you an extrovert or an introvert, are you a people person, do you like crowds or being more by yourself, do you like the great outdoors or does being indoors make you more comfortable?
This automatically leads to potential work interests – fields or careers that make sense based on your personality. You’ll figure out whether you want to work with a team or go it alone, work inside or outside, work in an office environment, pursue a more creative endeavor, work with numbers or words, etc.
Part of the self-assessment step is to figure out what kind of lifestyle you’d like to have – this will help you know how much money it might take to fulfill that lifestyle which could help shape your career choice.
Now that you know yourself better, have some career choices made, and decided on your desired lifestyle, in other words where you want to get to, it’s time to start planning how to get there. Make no mistake, there will be changes, zigs & zags, detours, and course corrections along the way, but hey, you’re on your way!
Here’s your chance to be creative – one of the elements of your plan will be the education required to obtain your career choice. It might be a high school diploma, technical school, military service, college degree, secondary degree, mentorship, etc. The costs associated with getting that education will also need to fit into your plan. Do you want to take a gap year, if so, where would that happen? Speaking of where, during the education phase of your plan, where do you want that to happen – at home or somewhere else in the world? All fun things to consider as long as you look on this as a way to design the life of your dreams – the beginning of your adventure!
Another element of your plan is what people do you need to surround yourself with to get the support that you’ll need to make this a reality. Family, friends, mentors, and a strong network of like-minded people can help make your plan a success.
OK, now it’s time to pull the trigger and start working your plan. As mentioned above, there will changes, stops & starts, and detours along the way but it’s all part of the process of creating your ideal life! The great news is that there is no final destination – the journey, with all of its twists and turns is actually living your Dream! Enjoy the ride!
The SAFE Steps can help you make it all happen – sign up to Learn More @ www.thesafesteps.com/learnmore
Safe Steps
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to