Visual requirements for a simple walking task were evaluated for young and elderly persons to determine if, with normal aging, elderly subjects require more visual information. Ten young adults and 10 elderly people were asked to complete a simple walking task within predetermined pathway boundaries under two conditions of visual restriction. In the reactive condition, subjects automatically received a 200 ms flash of visual information at the halfway point of the walkway. For the predictive condition, subjects did not receive any visual information during the walking trial, but were equipped with an emergency button that would provide 200 ms of visual information whenever they needed it. For both experimental conditions, subjects received additional flashes of visual information if they stepped out of the walkway boundaries. Results showed that older persons stepped out of bounds more often in the reactive condition and gave themselves more visual cues than the younger subjects in the predictive condition. The relative importance of vision during locomotion seems to be higher in the elderly population when compared to young adults.