If you have severe problems with speaking, is it okay to use more text and equations on slides? I understand that it is best to give a good oral presentation supported by slides with minimal text. Questions like this have been asked before, but in the context of a "normal" presenter. 

My ability to communicate in front of an audience is however so impaired by my nerves during a presentation that I think I can communicate more information by making nearly self-explanatory slides. 

What is your advice on this in case of unusual limitations or problems of the presenter? Problems such as:


nervousness up to the extent that language gets incoherent,
people who do not speak the language required for the presentation well,
people with voice problems.  


I understand this question can be a general debate of taste or style. But in general the objective in communication is the exchange of information by means of imperfect/corrupt media. If it’s difficult to repair or replace the media, it seems to make sense to change the mode of transmission. In an academic setting such as a conference presentation, or even a keynote, how acceptable is it to make the talk supporting the slides, in stead of the slides supporting the talk?
Slides with a lot of text or equations aiming to be self-explanatory tend to:


visually overwhelm the audience and don’t provide visual guidance – which is more relevant in talks than in written text as the audience needs to multitask to some extent, listening to the speaker and reading the slides at the same time;
contain more information than the audience can digest in the given time – regardless of what the speaker does;
have overly small text and graphics;
be read verbatim (which usually is a bad idea).


Mind the tend to: Neither are these issues inevitable, nor are they tied to the slides being self-explanatory. Rather, they are what often happens if an inexperienced speaker tries to make slides self-explanatory. In fact, I would consider most of my own slides self-explanatory and I am rather confident that my talks do not suffer from the above problems.

Hence I think your strategy to make your slides self-explanatory is fine – if you avoid the above problems. In detail, I recommend:


Avoid complete sentences, as they are bad for discontinuous reading such as usually done in talks.
Make sure that the main structure of each slide is easy to grasp.
Find a reasonable trade-off between not putting too much information on one slide and showing slides long enough.
If possible, use some test audience to ensure that your slides can be comprehended within the allotted time.
If a slide is complicated, build it up step by step in pieces that can be assessed by the audience within seconds.
Be careful not to overuse this feature, e.g., by uncovering a list item by item.
The audience likes to read ahead, in particular if you are rhetorically challenged.
Self-explanatory does not mean containing all the details.
In most cases, you barely have sufficient time to communicate your main message – only show what is essential to this message or at least make sure that sidenotes are visually distinct.
For example, if there is a standard way to choose the temperature at which you conduct your experiment, you usually don’t need to write this on your slide.
If you know that there are some people who cannot stop themselves from asking about this or it may be interesting for some members of the audience, give this information on the slides in a smaller font size or visually separate (and don’t talk about it).