{"id":16208,"date":"2025-08-07T19:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.3playmedia.com\/?page_id=16208"},"modified":"2025-08-22T20:24:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T20:24:58","slug":"justin-bishop","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.3playmedia.com\/learn\/faces-behind-the-screen\/justin-bishop\/","title":{"rendered":"Faces Behind the Screen: Justin Bishop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Faces Behind the Screen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin Bishop<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cAnd around that time, I gave up skateboarding and learned how to be fully blind.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Justin Bishop is a skateboarder through and through. Even when he lost his vision, he refused to give up his greatest passion: skateboarding. We had the opportunity to chat with Justin about what it\u2019s like to skateboard blind. Check out part one of the interview below and stay tuned for more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Return to all “Faces Behind the Screen” stories<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Justin
Photo by Saeed Rahbaran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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How do you identify in terms of your vision loss?<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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JUSTIN BISHOP: I\u2019m almost fully blind. I have a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. I have no vision in my left eye, and then in my right eye, my retina has detached. So I have no central vision. It\u2019s just black in front of me. Then on my peripheral, I can see some shapes and some shadows within like 10 feet or so \u2013 but it has to be high-contrast, really bright. If it\u2019s dark, then there\u2019s no way I can see the shadow. But that\u2019s where I\u2019m at right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever I talk about it or identify, I say blind slash visually impaired. I do the slash because people don\u2019t understand that there is a spectrum to being blind. So I lump them together so that you have to think about both aspects of it. I\u2019ve been losing my vision since I was about 10, and I\u2019ve always been low vision or visually impaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you first get into skateboarding and what has your journey been like coming back?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

JUSTIN BISHOP: I got into skateboarding mainly because it was something I could do alone. With other sports, you have to have a meeting, you have to meet up with the team, you have to have a coach. It was just too much and too structured. As a kid, it was just easy to just pick up a skateboard and just go skate, whenever you want and how long you wanted. So it was more just about the independence of skateboarding when I got into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say the journey of losing my sight and skateboarding has been a roller coaster. When I had vision I was a high-performing skateboarder. Then from the age of 20 to 25, I lost a majority of my sight. So I was just losing all this skill and talent that I practiced and that I gained from 10 years of skateboarding. I just lost it, over the course of a year. Then losing my eyesight, too. It was kind of a depressing time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around that time, I gave up skateboarding and learned how to be fully blind \u2013 a lot of cane and mobility training, a lot of tactile training, and Braille grade 1 training, stuff like that. Then, when I had my life down as being blind, I just kind of picked up skateboarding again, and fell in love with it all over again. I fell in love with learning how to do it, and I didn\u2019t care that I had to relearn everything. It was such a joy that it was worth relearning it twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Justin<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What type of assistive devices do you use to help you while skating?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

JUSTIN BISHOP: So right upfront, I use the white cane. I use [the white cane] every day. Pretty much the only time I don\u2019t use it is in my own home. But besides that, it\u2019s always in my hand. In my day-to-day, it just helps me get around a lot faster and more confidently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I\u2019m skating, the white cane will tell me directly what\u2019s in front of me. Then I also use something called a beeper box. It\u2019s an audible beeping marker, and I found it because other blind sports use it. I realized that I can use this for skateboarding and that I can set it up at an obstacle to know where I\u2019m at in the surrounding area. It\u2019s just pretty much a little box that beeps that you can just turn on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I was using that to skate, and Zappos kind of saw one of my videos using it, and they do a program with Not Impossible Labs, and they actually made something called a phased array speaker system. It\u2019s pretty much a beeper box on steroids. So I can actually change the direction of the sound. I can make a wall of sound. I can manipulate sound in all these crazy ways. So I\u2019ve been using that a lot more to skate.<\/p>\n\n\n

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