AXA : Putting it in black and white

Black-and-white PDFs provide a more accessible version of key documents.

The Site

AXA, the France-based insurance services group, announced its 2005 full year earnings today (28 February) and provides documents for the media and investor presentations in the Press Corner and Investor Relations sections respectively of its website. In each case the same four versions of the presentation slideshow are provided, all in PDF format: colour and black-and-white options are offered in both French and English.

The black-and-white versions are not straight monochrome reproductions of the colour versions: in some charts the colour gradations are eliminated rather than rendered as shades of grey.

The Takeaway

AXA’s PDF documentation of its presentation slideshow is nothing unusual in itself, but the provision of alternative colour and black-and-white versions is a noteworthy extension of the norm.

PDF provides a universal format that can be viewed on any browser and in a smaller file than, for example, Powerpoint. Black-and-white adds extra elements of convenience in terms of printability and accessibility: files are quicker to print and offer clearer reproduction on a monochrome printer of charts and graphs. These tend to be designed in colour but are often not optimised in their use of colour and tint combinations, rendering black-and-white print-offs difficult to interpret. For similar reasons, black-and-white provides a more accessible on-screen alternative for some users. AXA’s customisation of the charts for black-and-white shows it is alert to the issue.

More generally, where documents have a lot of images or graphics (not the case with AXA’s presentation), black-and-white PDF produces considerably smaller file sizes than colour PDF, which can be an important consideration on shared networks.

First published on 28 February, 2006