For the November Meetup, Ryan McVeigh walked us through behavioral testing using Behat and other complementary tools. Behat is a PHP testing framework that leverages the human readable Gherkin syntax. This allows for anyone to contribute to writing tests on projects, not only the developer. This ease in test writing means the user stories created at the beginning of a project can easily become what automated testing uses to evaluate the completed work. We also looked at the Mink extension, which emulates the browser.

Last month, Aten’s own Michaela Blackham presented on accessibility and what it means for each person in your company. From designers to developers to project managers and beyond, Michaela went through ways for everyone to champion making our products more accessible. She also explained that accessibility is more than just testing on screen readers for users with visual disabilities. Any person could become even temporarily disabled at any moment. A broken finger or sprained wrist will affect people’s ability to interact with the things we build.