Abstract
In recent years, the incidence of injury to elderly persons due to traffic accidents, slips, and falls has been rapidly increasing. Here we investigated the visual difficulties experienced by the elderly in daily life in order to propose a safer and more comfortable environment for them. Results of a survey concerning the vision-related activities and driving skills of 100 elderly subjects were examined in terms of the relationship between color discrimination ability and visual acuity. Eighty-three percent of subjects realized that their visual acuity was impaired. Reading a newspaper was the most common difficulty in everyday activities reported by the subjects, and this activity was slightly more affected by visual acuity than by color discrimination ability. The most difficult aspects of driving were identified to be driving at dusk and driving in the rain. Color discrimination ability was found to be slightly more influential in driving than visual acuity. Many subject drivers identified deep Yellow and deep Red as colors with higher visibility for umbrellas. These colors showed good visibility even for subjects with low visual acuity and low color discrimination ability. Our findings indicate the importance of developing and implementing visual and color environments for the elderly that take into consideration their age-related impairments in visual acuity and color discrimination ability.
