Meet Our Google Summer of Code 2013 Students—Part 2

This summer, for the second consecutive year, we partnered with Google Summer of Code. Thanks to this excellent program, we’ve had the opportunity to work with three wonderful students: Jordan Gould, Yashasvi Girdhar and Anuruddha Hettiarachchi.

All three have worked on open source projects (on which you can read more in our recent blog) that improve the usability of Bookshare for a diverse population of individuals with print disabilities.

We asked Jordan, Yashasvi and Anuruddha to tell us about their internship experience and some of their takeaways. Today we’re sharing Jordan’s story. (You can read Yashasvi’s story here).

Jordan Gould

My name is Jordan Gould and I am from Brantford, Ontario, Canada, a town about an hour south of Toronto. I am currently in my second year of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario.

I learned about Google Summer of Code through a faculty email and was interested in garnering an opportunity to learn more about the Android operating system and Java coding. I found the Benetech projects interesting because I am a person with low vision and have in the past used DAISY formatted books on CD with a specialized CD player. Since smartphones and tablets are more ubiquitous now, I believe that contributing to Go Read can help expand access and usability of DAISY books in an academic environment.

By participating in Google Summer of Code 2013 I am attempting to gain experience working with Android and Java while also contributing to a project that is beneficial to those with low vision.

So far I have learned quite a bit. I have become more familiar with Java as well as Android. I have also learned more about how an open source coding project works and how to use Git repositories to assist that endeavor.