---
title: "Judy Kegl (Judy Shepard-Kegl)"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Judy Kegl"
aliases: ["Judy Shepard-Kegl"]
first_seen: "2026-08-24T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Nicaraguan Sign Language","Ann Senghas","Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects, Inc.","Melania Morales Special Education Center"]
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
---


MIT-trained linguist who, working in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s, identified
that the deaf children of Managua's special-education schools had developed
a genuine, previously undocumented sign language, and later founded
Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects, Inc. to support the community she
studied. She matters to this vault as an independent Tier-1 voice
corroborating Ann Senghas's own account of the schools' founding and
mechanism: her organization's own site, not a secondary retelling, is one
of the two primary sources the vault's NSL founding-dates cluster now rests
on.

## References
- [[claim-nsl-emerged-in-managua-schools-after-failed-oral-spanish-curriculum]]
- [[claim-nsl-signing-community-grew-to-over-500-members-by-mid-1990s]]