Dan Mancina

Early Life

Dan Mancina, widely known as “The Blind Skateboarder”– has always been a skateboarder, but he hasn’t always been blind. Diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) at the age of 13, he didn’t feel the effects of the disease until he started driving.

Growing up in Michigan as the youngest of four boys, Mancina was initially a snowboarder. He got into skateboarding after hearing that it was a good way to strengthen your snowboarding skills during the summer. “I picked up the board, and it just kind of took over,” said Mancina. After graduating high school, he moved to California to chase his skateboarding dream while working at a skate and surf shop in Santa Monica.

By the age of 21, Mancina’s vision had started to deteriorate rapidly, and he had to stop driving. He was considered legally blind by the age of 22. “That’s when I started to consider myself a blind person,” said Mancina. “That’s when it really started to have an effect on who I was and what I did in life.” Around this same time Mancina became a father for the first time, and he decided to stop skating.

Career

Mancina had just started to use a cane when he graduated with an associate’s degree in aviation management, initially hoping to work at an airport. A year later, he transitioned to massage therapy and received orientation and mobility (O&M) training for the first time at Leader Dogs for the Blind in Rochester, MI. Experiencing an environment that was fully accessible changed his life and inspired him to go to school to become a Vision Rehabilitation Therapist (VRT).

During this period in his life, Mancina came to accept his blindness and become more confident in himself again. His passion for skating was reignited, making him feel complete. Now, Mancina skates for a living, keeping his VRT skills in his back pocket.

Since then, much of Mancina’s mission in life has been centered on challenging others’ misperceptions about blindness and what blind people are capable of. He founded Keep Pushing, Inc. ─ a non-profit dedicated to sharing the traditions of skateboarding with the differently-abled community. His goal is to ensure that blind children, teens, and adults all have the same opportunities as anyone else.

The Dot Experience

As a member of The Dot Experience Cast, Dan Mancina is excited to be part of something with accessibility at its core. “Anyone who puts the time into making something more accessible gets me stoked,” Mancina said. He appreciates that The Dot Experience was “made accessible from the beginning.”

Mancina looks forward to exploring the museum once it opens and hopes it will spread more awareness about what blind people are capable of ─ and demonstrate that accessibility is achievable. “That’s always the goal,” Mancina said.

Dan Mancina resides in Detroit, MI, where he built a fully adaptive skate park on his property. Designed to match his own skating style, the park also allows him to use his VRT skills when hosting other members of the blind or low-vision community. He is a father ─ with another child on the way ─ and shares his home with Otter, his 135-pound Newfoundland.

To keep up with Dan Mancina as he works to change how people perceive those who are blind or have low vision, you can follow him on Instagram.