ABSTRACT

The elderly persons with visual impairments, especially whoreside in the rural areas, were not much socially recognized whencompared to the other people. The purposes of this study were toassess how hard their lives have been and to suggest some waysof improving their quality of life. Basically, they were in need bothfinancially and emotionally for their daily life. That is, the amountof their monthly expenditure was equivalent to about 13% of themonthly income for the urban-area-residing general households.Also, a number of the respondents expressed that they had neitherfriends nor offsprings who could visit or call them at all. Inaddition, many respondents suffered from a severe illness. Thus, itwas stated that a variety of programs or systems which help themto cope with their needs should be developed or built.