EduAble
Accessible education platform — 1st Place, Coherence 2026
The Problem
Educational content needs to be accessible across formats — video, audio, text. Server-side processing is expensive at scale and introduces latency. The challenge was building an accessibility-first platform that could transform media without backend compute costs.
Architecture
Next.js 16 frontend with React 19 server components. Express/Node API for data persistence with MongoDB. GCP Storage for media assets. The key architectural decision: WebAssembly FFmpeg running entirely in the browser for video and audio processing.
Key Decisions
Used WebAssembly FFmpeg for client-side processing instead of server-side — eliminated compute costs entirely and reduced processing latency by moving work to the user's machine.
Built on Next.js 16 with React 19 to leverage server components for initial page loads while keeping interactive elements client-side.
Chose MongoDB over PostgreSQL for flexible schema evolution during rapid hackathon development.
Outcome
Won 1st Place at Coherence 2026 Hackathon. The WebAssembly approach proved the viability of client-side media processing for accessibility tooling.