Straight talk about
your condition.

What we do, and do not do, with information that reaches us through these websites.

The Orthopaedic Club is a family of patient education websites. We have built them to be useful, to be free, and to leave you alone. This section explains how that works in practice.

The short version

We do not require you to sign in. We do not ask for your name, email address, or any personal information to read anything on this site. We do not sell, share, or rent any information about visitors.

What we collect

Cookies

This website does not set tracking cookies. If a small functional cookie is ever required (for example, to remember a preference you have set), it will only be used for that purpose and only on your device.

Analytics

We may use a privacy-respecting analytics service to understand which guides are most useful so we can improve them. Where used, the analytics are aggregate only: we see counts of visits and which pages are read, not who you are, what device you are using, or what you do elsewhere on the internet. No personal data is collected and no third-party advertising trackers are loaded.

Server logs

Like any website, our hosting provider keeps short-term technical logs (for example, the time of a request and the rough geographic region it came from) to keep the site secure and online. These logs are not used to build a profile of you and are not retained beyond standard operational periods.

Email

If you choose to email us, we will read your message and reply. We do not add email addresses to any mailing list and we do not use them for any purpose other than answering you.

What we do not do

• We do not sell or share information about visitors with third parties.
• We do not run advertising on these websites.
• We do not use behavioural tracking, fingerprinting, or third-party advertising pixels.
• We do not require accounts or logins to read any of the patient information.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 you have rights over any personal data we hold about you, including the right to ask what we hold, to ask for it to be corrected, and to ask for it to be erased. Because we collect very little, in practice this usually means the contents of any email you have sent us. To make a request, write to info@orthopaedicclub.com.

Children

These websites are aimed at adult patients. We do not knowingly collect any information from children. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

Changes

If we make material changes to how we handle information, we will update this section and the date below.

Contact

Questions about privacy can be sent to info@orthopaedicclub.com. We aim to respond within a reasonable time.

We want these guides to be readable, navigable and understandable for every patient, on every device.

The Orthopaedic Club is committed to making its websites accessible to as many people as possible, including users with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive needs. We design and build with this in mind from the start.

The standard we follow

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA. This is the standard recommended by the UK government for public-facing websites and used as the international benchmark for digital accessibility.

What we do

• Use clear, plain English and avoid unnecessary medical jargon.
• Maintain strong colour contrast between text and background.
• Make sure every image has alternative text describing what it shows.
• Use semantic HTML so screen readers can navigate the content meaningfully.
• Build pages that work without a mouse, using keyboard navigation alone.
• Allow text to be resized by browser zoom up to 200% without loss of content.
• Design layouts that adapt to phones, tablets, and desktops.
• Force the site to render in light mode so cream backgrounds and dark text stay legible regardless of device settings.

Known limitations

We are an independent project run by clinicians in their own time, and we know our work is not perfect. The following areas may not yet fully meet AA standards:

• Some interactive diagrams and exercise illustrations may not have full text alternatives.
• Some embedded infographics are images of text. Where this happens we aim to provide the same information elsewhere on the page in real text.
• PDFs and downloadable documents (where present) may not be fully tagged for screen readers.

We are working to address these as we update each guide.

Help us improve

If you find a page that is difficult to read, navigate, or understand, or anything else that is making the site hard to use, please let us know. Tell us the page you were on, the device or assistive technology you were using, and what went wrong. Even a short note is genuinely helpful.

Write to info@orthopaedicclub.com. We aim to respond within a reasonable time.

How this site was tested

The site has been tested against the WCAG 2.1 AA criteria using a combination of automated tooling and manual checks across desktop and mobile browsers. Testing is ongoing as new guides are added.