Accessibility, Speed Boost, and Search Improvements
Hi! Nick Gray here with another week of improvements to PatronView.
I’ve been focused on making the site more accessible, faster, and easier for search engines like Google to understand. Plus, we’ve continued expanding our database with new institution records.
Here’s what we’ve been working on.
Enhanced Accessibility with ALT Text
I know this might seem small, but I implemented a comprehensive ALT text system across the entire site, making PatronView more accessible to users with screen readers and visual impairments.
I used Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash library to help review all the images (like cover pages of annual reports) and then write a short, descriptive summary of each image.
Every document thumbnail now has descriptive ALT text that’s stored directly in our database. This means: * Screen readers can describe source document images to visually impaired users * Image search engines can better understand our content * Broken images display helpful fallback text * The site meets modern web accessibility standards
This was a change that touched nearly every patron page. It’s part of our commitment to making cultural philanthropy data accessible to everyone.
Better Search Engine Understanding
We rolled out structured data markup (JSON-LD schema) across patron, fund, and institution pages.
What this means is that search engines now have a much clearer understanding of: * Who each patron is (using Person schema) * What each institution represents (using Organization schema) * How donations and funds are structured (using custom schemas)
This invisible improvement helps search engines display richer results when people search for patrons or institutions. You might start seeing enhanced search results with more detailed information pulled directly from our structured data.
50% Speed Improvement
We implemented Phase 1 of our speed optimization project and achieved some impressive results.
Time to First Byte (TTFB) - the time it takes for the server to start sending data - has improved by 50% across the board. This means: * Pages start loading almost instantly * The site feels snappier, especially on slower connections * Better experience for international visitors * Improved search engine rankings (speed is a ranking factor)
I have a bunch of Phase 2 optimizations that I want to do next, like using Cloudflare Workers KV to faster database reads. Those are already in the planning stages.
New Institution Data Added
We’ve added tens of thousands of new patron records from prestigious New York institutions:
These additions expand our coverage of arts philanthropy in New York and helped to enrich thousands of our existing patron records. Each source has been carefully processed and human-verified to maintain our high data accuracy standards.
Improved Error Handling and SEO
Finally, we made significant improvements to how the site handles errors and helps search engines index our content. This was a problem because after our recent database migration, we had a lot of broken pages and errors in our sitemap files.
Smarter 404 Pages
Fixed “soft 404” errors where pages appeared to work but actually had no content. Now when you hit a page that doesn’t exist, you get a proper 404 status code, which helps search engines understand which pages are valid and which aren’t.
Enhanced Sitemaps
Our sitemaps now include: * Last modification dates for every page * Proper pagination for large collections * Better organization of content hierarchy
These changes help search engines crawl our site more efficiently and understand when content has been updated. And that means more data available to the general public.
What’s Next
Lots more database updates coming. New features, new bios to our most popular patron pages, and tens (maybe hundreds!) of thousands of new records will be added.