July 2025 -- This month, as the City of Los Angeles joins cities and states across the country in celebrating Disability Pride Month, the US is marking the 35th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The bipartisan-supported law, signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, protects the civil rights of people with disabilities, ensuring equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency.
The Department on Disability leads these efforts for the City of Los Angeles: providing education, advocacy, and support to all City Departments to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities.
Mobility challenges are a huge obstacle to those living with disabilities. Building on the City’s broad commitment to reducing barriers to equal access, the Bureau of Engineering (Engineering), through a variety of innovative initiatives, is working to incorporate ADA accessibility into all phases of the City’s infrastructure project delivery across Los Angeles.
In 2020, following an extensive national search, Engineering hired the City’s first ADA Coordinator for Pedestrian Rights of Way, Natalie Sparrow.
Sparrow serves as the City’s primary administrator on disability access for the City’s public pedestrian facilities. Her work spans across all City departments and includes policy development, oversight of technical compliance and managing fulfillment of the City’s $1.4-billion Willits’ Settlement Agreement being implemented via the Sidewalk Repair Program (SRP). Sparrow is also leading the City in ensuring that the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics Games in Los Angeles are delivered in a way that is equally accessible to residents and visitors with disabilities.
“When I joined the City of Los Angeles my primary focus was on the City’s Sidewalk Repair Program and our compliance with the Settlement Agreement and disabled access standards,” said Sparrow. “After decades of deferred maintenance on the City’s 9,000 miles of sidewalks, we saw that sidewalks are just one piece of the accessibility puzzle. That is why the Bureau of Engineering, through my participation, is taking on supporting other departments to make sure every project the City delivers incorporates accessibility.”
Sparrow is a Certified Access Specialist (CASp) and has a Master’s degree in Public Health from Tulane University and ADA Coordinator Certification from the ADA National Network. She brings more than 15 years of professional experience working with and for people with disabilities to her work with the City.
“This is not just work for me, it’s very personal,” said Sparrow. “I used a wheelchair during my most formative childhood years. I vividly remember not being able to use the restrooms at school without assistance, not being able to fit through the entrance of the local courthouse to attend a family wedding, and having to read books in the principal’s office instead of participating in activities with other kids.”
“Things have improved since the passing of the ADA, but there is still more important work to do. I am thrilled to be able to contribute to those efforts,” Sparrow added.
Since 2016, Engineering has sought to improve and expedite the SRP, which has received considerable interest from residents. Part of Sparrow’s work has been overseeing the ongoing response and fulfillment of requests from people with disabilities who are facing barriers in the City’s pedestrian facilities. She is also supporting a new initiative to inventory and assess the condition of pedestrian facilities, ensuring its results will support an update to the City-wide ADA Self-Evaluation and Transition Plan.
In Sparrow’s work consulting with multiple City departments, she supports their efforts to design and construct public facilities to ensure equal access and independence for people with mobility challenges. To codify these improvements, she is part of the team updating the City’s standard plans for pedestrian facilities and she is helping to update the City’s street design manual. The goal of the new manual is to go beyond just including minimum required accessibility improvements to consistently achieve high-quality design that supports everyone’s use of the public right of way.
Recently, Sparrow has been named Accessibility Chief in the Mayor’s Office of Major Events, to oversee accessibility for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In 2024, Sparrow was part of a delegation that visited the Paralympic Games in Paris to participate in the City of Paris’ Host City Delegation Program and the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee’s Activities and Learning Program. There she met with Paris’ executive staff and was able to see firsthand how they incorporated accessibility into every part of their planning and execution.
“Seeing the Paralympic Games in Paris in person was incredibly informative,” said Sparrow. “Welcoming people from around the world to the Games means making them accessible to everyone, regardless of their needs.
“This is a huge undertaking, but we are committed to making the 2028 Games the most accessible in the history of the Olympics and Paralympics and providing meaningful and long lasting benefits for all Angelenos," added Sparrow.
The challenges for any city seeking to make all public infrastructure accessible to all is huge. Sparrow noted that the 2020 US Census found that nearly 42.5 million people — or 13% of the population — had a disability. “We are definitely moving in the right direction,” said Sparrow. “The commitment is there. I’m confident that we will get there.”
Sparrow has served on the Board of Directors for the Certified Access Specialist Institute (CASI) and is a Steering Committee Chair of the California Network of ADA Coordinators.
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