Amazon Fire TV devices get two major hearing aid upgrades for family streaming

• Amazon’s flagship Fire TV Omni Mini LED TV series now supports Dual Audio.
• This feature allows sound to be streamed to a supported hearing aid and through the TV speakers.
• Select Amazon Device packaging includes a raised QR code with access to installation instructions.

Amazon has had quite a busy few months – including new Kindles, a Fire TV Stick refresh and an introduction to Mini LED TVs – and is now debuting a new accessibility feature, expanding another and highlighting an accessible addition to some product packaging.

A variety of Fire TV devices already support the ability to send audio directly to hearing aids with support for the Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids (ASHA) protocol. However, Amazon’s latest move is called “Dual Audio” and is exclusive to the Fire TV Omni Mini LED TV series for now – it allows you to send audio to a hearing aid using ASHA and audio through the TV speakers.

This is the first time a Fire TV device can send audio in two streams. This way, if you wear a hearing aid, you can watch TV with your family members and make it a shared experience without delay. It’s exciting to see this launch for the Fire TV Omni Mini LED TV series, but I really hope Amazon can expand this to other Fire TV devices too – whether it’s a Fire TV 4-Series model or a streaming stick.

Enabling this will require a software update, which will be rolled out to the Fire TV Omni Mini LED TV series in the coming weeks. Once it’s installed, you can enable ‘Dual Audio’ in Settings under Accessibility. You pair a compatible hearing aid with the TV to start the process, which allows you to listen to audio through both the device and the TV speakers. After that initial setup, you can also use quick settings to turn the feature on and off.

More broadly, in addition to the Fire TV Omni Mini LED TV series, Amazon is expanding the types of hearing aids that can be paired with its Fire TV family of devices. Now supported through the audio streaming protocol for hearing aids are the Widex Moment Behind-The-Ear (BTE) and Receiver-In-Canal (RIC) aids. BTE and RIC hearing aids are supported on all ASHA-compatible Fire TV devices, such as the Omni TV Series, Fire TV Cube, and the 2 and 4 Series Fire TV models.

In addition to support for more types of hearing aids and Dual Audio on the Fire TV Omni Mini LED TV series, Amazon has also added a tactically marked, raised QR code to the packaging of select devices. The QR code, with raised dots, is designed to help customers who are visually impaired or blind easily access quick installation guides and other supporting documents. You scan the QR code and will be directed there; the raised QR code can be found in the “upper left corner of the rear panel of the device Quick Start Guide” in the packaging.