As Richard Moore rolls around his local skate park on the edge of Adelaide's CBD, he makes it look easy as he jumps, spins and slides.
It seems effortless, but this confident display is the product of a grinding journey to learn how to live with a visual impairment.
"I've had to relearn how to walk with a cane, so adapting that to skateboarding has been really difficult," Mr Moore said.
After countless hours, the 34-year-old has the obstacles and ramps of the skate park mapped in his mind.
Cracks in the concrete send vibrations through his skateboard to tell him his location.
Two quick taps of his cane show him the position and height of what is in front of him.
Everything else is instinct, courage and patience.
"I will spend hours trying to do a trick, and it is torturous," Mr Moore said.
"It's funny, skateboarding has given me a new patience in myself to deal with the rest of the challenges of life.
"I don't think people can understand that someone with a disability, such as being blind or vision impaired, can do something like skateboarding.
"You often get asked if it's for a gimmick, or some kind of stunt."
It's not a gimmick — Richard has rapid onset retinitis pigmentosa and has lost 95 per cent of his vision since he was diagnosed in 2018.
"These days my focal range is around the size of about a five-cent-piece and on top of that I have visual snow, so what looks like bad TV static," Mr Moore said.
It means skating is less and less about what he can see.
"Blind skating is all through feel," he said.
Mental health impact
Retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, is a hereditary condition that causes the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye to break down.
There is a high chance Mr Moore will lose what little vision he has left.
"You're in a constant losing battle, you're seeing the life you used to have slipping away," he said.
"I've had to adapt a lot, and I've lost a lot in the process.
"As my vision has deteriorated, it's taken a huge toll on my mental health, which has really affected everything from my sense of self and my purpose in life, through to creating and maintaining relationships."
He said at times it had been a lonely journey.
"Having any sort of social interaction with blindness or a visual impairment just means you have to put in that extra mile," he said.
"If I'm sitting in one of my depressional states and I'm feeling quite low, that drive to get out can be quite minimal."
In these moments, Mr Moore said skateboarding is his saviour.
"Skateboarding can be a really good way to get out and a really good form of therapy, because you're getting out and doing something rewarding, but it also allows you to have that social interaction," he said.
Overcoming barriers
Until his diagnosis, visual arts were a huge part of his life.
As a graphic artist and self-confessed fashion geek, he has combined these passions to create an inclusive fashion label.
It is called Wiretap and he described it as a lifestyle brand with some extras for adaptive skateboarders.
He laughed as he admitted making a brand solely for blind skaters would be a little too niche.
"At the moment the blind skateboarding community is non-existent. As far as I'm aware I'm the only blind or VI (vision impaired) skater in Australia," he said.
Richard's clothes have some basic features he would like introduced across the entire fashion industry, such as braille labels.
His clothes also provide practical solutions to some of the novel issues facing blind people trying to stay active.
"I got really sick of losing my hat at the skate park ... I wanted to make life easier for myself," he said.
To solve this, Richard designed his hats so they can be clipped onto the hem of his shirts — It's a small change that makes a big difference when he falls off his board.
Richard is also a graphic designer and has overcome the barriers of his vision loss to create the motifs and labels of the brand.
"We're at a point now where there is so much adaptive technology in place now where you can still work in a visual industry despite having minimal vision," he said.
The brand has been embraced by the wider skating community and is stocked at a handful of stores in Canberra and Melbourne.
It is a success Richard said he could not have imagined two years ago when he started losing his vision.
"Life after diagnosis and rapid vision loss, has led to a complete change in my perception of what is possible," he said.
"I've gone from having skateboarding as a hobby to being an industry recognised skateboarder.
"I've gone from having an interest in fashion to running my own clothing brand.
"I never expected something as debilitating as vision loss could open up so many doors."
