Dan Mancina has been a skateboarder since the age of seven, but when he was 13, he was diagnosed with rhinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that rendered him almost completely blind by 22.
He hit pause on his skateboarding for a couple of years in his early 20s, but decided to pick it back up again, now using a white cane to shred more confidently.
Now almost 38, he’s a professional skateboarder, relearning tricks, and even completing the course at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Although he’s learned to find his way with tactile markers like cracks in the asphalt and pre-mapped courses, he wants a better experience for fellow visually impaired skaters.
About seven years ago, he started dreaming of creating the world’s first adaptive skatepark right in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan.
Finally, the park is a reality.
Called “The Ranch,” the 5,000-square-foot skatepark is completely accessible, allowing both seasoned low-vision boarders to take it for a spin and newcomers to the sport to feel welcome.
“I think of it as giving them the opportunity to try it out,” Mancina told Olympics.com earlier this year. “Traditionally, there’s not as many opportunities for sports for the blind, so really it's just giving that as an option. Not everybody wants to skate, but everyone should have at least the opportunity to try it.”
In a recent video, blind content creator Anthony S. Ferraro, who reviews and documents his experiences in accessible environments to an audience of over 1.4 million on TikTok, showed off the park’s features.
“I’m blind and this is the world’s first-ever adaptive skatepark,” he exclaims, jumping off a fixture at the park.
“Built for the blind, by the blind,” Mancino chimes in.
Ferraro shows off a 40-foot-long flat bar that is surrounded with plenty of room to set up, so skaters can feel their way through the course, with a ledge to match, for hands or canes to find stability.
“When you can’t see, it’s hard to go in a straight line sometimes, so this gives you plenty of room so you know you can go left or right,” he says, pointing to a quarter pipe that is longer and wider than what someone might find in a traditional skatepark.
Other features include rollers, bank ramps, and ledges, with manual pads and platforms, all designed to be easier to navigate for people with vision impairments or in wheelchairs.
“It's just the size of everything,” Mancina explained to Olympics.com. “The quarter pipe, it's 45 feet wide. Your average quarter pipe in a skatepark may be eight feet wide. The ledge – your average skatepark ledge is eight, maybe 10 feet. My ledge is 40 feet long. Same with the flat bar.”
“It just gives you more time to figure out where you are, line yourself up,” he added. “Not being able to see something, you got to feel it and figure out where you're at. You might veer a little bit, but you have a lot of room for error.”
That’s exactly what Ferraro illustrates on his board, accompanied by his cane, pointing out minute details that he especially appreciates as a disabled skateboarder.
“Even this crack lines you up perfectly with the manny pad,” he says in his video, pointing to an obstacle that’s used to practice and improve manual, or wheelie, tricks.
Ledges are also strategically placed to use as a guide when performing tricks, which Ferraro demonstrated in a video, skating with ease. All of the skatepark’s features are set up to be a guide for one another, allowing skaters to creatively use the environment to move from one obstacle to the next.
Auditory cues are also placed throughout the park in the form of beepers, which warn a skater about a dangerous drop or guide them to a particular obstacle. Mancina also said he’s been experimenting with adhesive tile and bricks that skaters can feel as they roll over, designating certain areas of the course.
“Also if you have some vision, the features have great contrast, so you can see them easily,” Ferraro adds.
Obstacles at The Ranch are dark green to set them apart from gray cement, and colored duct tape also helps provide guidance.
“I'm definitely not creating any new obstacles,” Mancina told Olympics.com. “It's just the things that I enjoy skating and then adapting that to make it easier to skate as a blind person or in a wheelchair … That's the big thing — adapting things that I like to skate to make them more skateable.”
Next up, he plans to host workshops and camps for other visually impaired skaters who want to learn how to skate with a white cane.
“Dan plans to host monthly skate workshops and skateboard lessons for local youth and adults who are blind and visually-impaired, annual adaptive contests to help push for skateboarding the Paralympics, as well as us[ing] park adaptations to influence future public skateparks,” Mancina’s website shares.
While he plans his programming, Mancina said the park is open to anyone who wants to visit. It’s privately managed, but he said any disabled skaters can reach out to skate it, just like his good friend Ferraro.
“It’s been so inspiring to watch this come to reality. I’ve never had a place where I can skate with full confidence, not to mention a great environment to learn new stuff from Dan,” Ferraro ends his video.
“Thanks for building this park, Dan, [you’re] a true pioneer.”
Header image courtesy of Keep Pushing Inc/Crowd Digital Marketing
