Ambient Thread Foundation
Bringing Inclusive, Personalized Audio Management to the Sound-Sensitive Community
About Ambient Thread Foundation
The Ambient Thread Foundation is a nonprofit organization focused on making everyday listening easier, more accessible, and more inclusive for people with different hearing and auditory needs. We believe everyone should have access to high-quality audio tools that support daily life and allow for personalized listening solutions.
Our goal is to create thoughtful, easy-to-use software that helps people feel more comfortable, aware, and connected to the world around them.
Using advanced dual-channel sound-routing technology, our app is designed to recreate features typically found only in more expensive, specialized audio technology.
By making these tools more accessible and affordable, we hope to improve everyday comfort, situational awareness, communication, and connection for more people.
App coming in 2027!
The world is loud. We want to help people navigate it with more clarity and confidence.
Our Solutions
More About Us (Melissa's Story)
Our founder, Melissa Burns, is newly single-sided deaf. After needing urgent brain surgery to remove a huge acoustic neuroma in 2024, she woke up to a completely different listening experience. The previous invisible privilege of balanced, two-sided listening became acutely apparent. While adjusting to managing sound from a single dominant side, she encountered a consistent frustration: a lack of accessible consumer software options to help balance everyday environmental noise. The existing specialized audio hardware options were prohibitively expensive and lacked customizable consumer flexibility. Though we are aware that each person experiences hearing loss differently, our goal is to present an innovative, user-friendly mobile application. We believe sophisticated environmental audio solutions should be accessible to anyone interested in optimizing their daily listening. We want to educate the public and share our open-access innovations with everyone. That experience became the foundation for our work. We know hearing loss and auditory needs look different for everyone, but we believe useful listening tools should not be out of reach. Our goal is to create a thoughtful, user-friendly app that helps people feel more comfortable, aware, and connected in the environments they move through every day.
Accessibility-Focused Audio App for iOS
Our flagship iOS app is being developed to help users get more out of the headphones they already own. Expected in 2027, the app will use advanced sound-routing technology to bring features typically associated with specialized, costly audio equipment to standard iOS devices. The app is designed for people who experience uneven or asymmetrical listening environments, including those who rely more heavily on one side for hearing. The goal is to make it easier to follow conversations, stay aware of what is happening around them, and feel more comfortable in louder spaces.
Community Support and Resources
We are committed to more than building an app. Through advocacy, education, and community-based inclusion efforts, we hope to make helpful listening technology easier to understand and more accessible to the people who could benefit from it.