Alexa Media Player on older Kindle device

I have a Kindle Fire HD8 6th gen that I planned on using for my alarm panel. I also was interested in using the Alexa Media Player integration to allow for using it to play a siren/alarm sound. Problem: 6th gen doesn’t appear to have the Alexa hands-free feature. You have to hold the Home button to “wake up” Alexa and listen. Playing around has shown that this changes the state of the entity from unavailable to standby. But it doesn’t play the sound file or tts message that both work on my Fire HD10 and Echo.

Has anyone had any success in communicating with the non-hands free devices?

Any help or alternatives would be appreciated.
Thanks.