With COVID we need to be even more cognizant of employees facing mental health challenges. Because of the economic trials, fears of a life-threatening illness and continuing isolation, people have no lack of stressors.

“The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to roll back many of the gains we have made since then. Mark’s arrival to our Board of Directors comes at a critical time,” said NOD’s Board Chairman Gov. Tom Ridge. “We will need to tap his considerable skills, along with those of our entire Board of Directors, to work with the disability community to ensure people with disabilities are not excluded from the economic recovery once our nation has been able to defeat the virus. We thank Mark for his leadership.”

If this crisis has taught us one thing it is that we are all connected. We are in this together and we will get through this together. Every one of us has the capacity for resilience. This is a trait that people with disabilities use every single day to navigate a world that was not built for them. This is also something that businesses need in abundance right now.

Suddenly, now that the majority of the US population is affected, employers have to demonstrate a flexibility that was unthinkable — even with the Americans with Disabilities Act in place, which is celebrating its 30-year anniversary in July.

“We have proven that we can change our habits. We can accommodate people much more than we thought,” Charles-Edouard Catherine, special assistant to the director of the National Organization on Disability (NOD) told DW.

Many people with disabilities who have underlying health conditions are facing the prospect not just of being locked down for weeks, but, in fear of basic survival, are envisaging a self-isolation period stretching to months and even into 2021.

However, beyond the immediate focus on the challenges thrown up by the current crisis, there is a deeper and longer-term fear that for people with disabilities, Covid-19 will see a turning back of the clock on their participation as equals in our society.