Because the speakup.i kernel was removed. It used to be there at one time. I think a determination was made that the speakup.s kernel would work for ide disks too and that freed up some space on the CD for other software. One note that should maybe be added to the speakup documentation for slackware is about swap partitions needing to be twice the ram size that's on a computer. With slackware, it's possible to create a swap partition first then create the remaining partitions after that. A note about shadowconfig on might help some, and a note about slapt-get could go a little way towards helping new users keep up with new updates. None of this stuff is mentioned by Patrick in the welcome message. The hosts.deny and hosts.allow files would be another good topic to cover even if all that's done is to suggest new installers read their man pages.
