Plugin fatal errors under PHP 5.6

[ironprogrammer]

Issue

The following fatal error occurs when the activated plugin's environment is switched to PHP 5.6, which as of this writing is still supported by WordPress.

Catchable fatal error: Argument 1 passed to WPCOTool\Plugin::__construct() must be an instance of WPCOTool\string, string given, called in .../contributor-orientation-tool/contributor-orientation-tool.php on line 32 and defined in .../contributor-orientation-tool/src/WPCOTool/Plugin.php on line 74

The error stems from use of the string scalar type declaration in class constructors, support for which was added in PHP 7.0.

I came across this issue after switching PHP versions to test a PHP-version-specific WordPress core patch.

PHP Support

I understand that the plugin is marked as requiring a minimum of PHP 7.0, however, the source of this fatal error may not be apparent to some users. Preventing the occurrence of the resultant white screen of death would be a preferable alternative 😂 ...at least until PHP 5.6 support is officially dropped.