{"id":267822,"date":"2026-01-28T06:07:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T06:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/267822\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T06:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T06:07:13","slug":"accessibility-is-not-a-luxury-its-a-human-right-wexford-actress-ruth-codd-on-adjusting-to-life-after-second-leg-amputation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/267822\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Accessibility is not a luxury, it\u2019s a human right\u2019 \u2013 Wexford actress Ruth Codd on adjusting to life after second leg amputation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The 29-year-old Wexford woman appeared on the programme last week to reflect on a landmark year professionally and personally, joking that she \u201ccould have done without\u201d the surgery, which took place in November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ms Codd previously had one leg amputated at the age of 23 after complications arising from a serious injury she sustained as a teenager. Speaking to host Patrick Kielty, she explained that the injury occurred when she was 15 and \u201cjust kicking a ball around\u201d with friends, but it failed to heal properly and ultimately led to a series of medical setbacks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cI didn&#8217;t even play football,\u201d she told host Kielty. \u201cI was just kicking around a ball with my friends. I just fell. It was just a bad break. It didn&#8217;t heal properly. And I think there was a couple of things that went wrong with treating it initially and just kind of spiralled.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">She went on to have 10 operations with number 11 being her first amputation. Two months on from her second amputation in November, Ruth is still getting used to her \u201cnew normal\u201d. On Friday, she walked across the Late Late Show stage to join fellow guest, English comedian John Bishop and with the help of her National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) physio, has been able to get back horse riding.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ruth Codd was a contestant on BBC1\u2019s smash-hit show, The Celebrity Traitors (Handout\/PA)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/26a0b0f5-1615-4519-9c60-906fb0543eb6.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Ruth Codd was a contestant on BBC1\u2019s smash-hit show, The Celebrity Traitors (Handout\/PA)<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">As well as starring in the hit BBC programme The Celebrity Traitors, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Midnight Club and the motion picture How to Train your Dragon, \u201cI got my legs chopped off on top of all of that,\u201d she remarked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cA lot of times, people say to me, \u2018Oh, well you chose it. It was your choice\u2019, because it was an elective amputation. But surgeons just don\u2019t go chopping off limbs willy-nilly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cIt was the only way for my quality of life to improve, and I\u2019m not willing to spend my entire life in a hospital bed for the sake of keeping a leg that doesn\u2019t work\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cI\u2019m not going to say that my life is the same. It\u2019s different, but in a good way, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">In a statement following her appearance on Friday, she reflected on being just a month on from taking her first steps and expressed her sincere thanks to the team at the NRH.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cI work in an industry that isn&#8217;t necessarily the most accessible or understanding of disabled people. When I entered the NRH I was overworked and honestly, overwhelmed. I was starting to believe that there wasn\u2019t a place for someone like me in the film industry,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom5 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cThe kindness and patience I have experienced from every single member of staff there has made me realise that when I advocate for myself on set, as exhausting as it is sometimes, I&#8217;m not only standing up for my needs but hopefully can make it a little easier for the next disabled person that deserves a shot at a doing something they love. Accessibility is not a luxury it&#8217;s a human right and the bare minimum.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 29-year-old Wexford woman appeared on the programme last week to reflect on a landmark year professionally and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3502,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-267822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cillian-boggan","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}