People with cochlear implants can now stream audio directly from smart TVs, revolutionizing their entertainment experience.
Why it matters
Understanding speech on television is difficult, but this new capability significantly improves comprehension because the audio now goes directly to the cochlear implants.
How it works
In 2018, Google introduced Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids (ASHA). ASHA allows people to stream audio from Pixel smartphones directly to their hearing aids, sidestepping the microphones and acting as wireless headphones. Microphones have difficulty capturing and transmitting sound from speakers.
Now Amazon and implant-maker Cochlear have joined forces to enable ASHA streaming from Fire TVs to cochlear implants. This service is currently available for compatible implants and TVs.
The technology works over living-room distances.
“If I was trying to watch on the TV in the living room, I’d probably be missing out on, say, 40-50% of the words due to the echoing, the loss in quality, and due to the different voices that you might not be so familiar with,” said Michael Forzano, an Amazon software engineer with a cochlear implant.
Reality check
Many cochlear implant models and TVs are incompatible with Amazon's new capability.
