I think bitcoin self custody is pretty easy already. I think a better way to put the question is how to make secure self custody easier in a way that mitigates against catastrophic risk (i.e. a single point of failure leading to your entire stack being drained)

Practice makes self-custody easier.

Human readable bitcoin addresses. I think long random strings of characters are intimidating to the average person.

I'd like to see something like BIP 39 as an alternative encoding for bitcoin addresses, but it should be distinct from BIP 39 in an obvious way.

Just riffing. There's probably good reason to not do this.

proper widespread education will make bitcoining easier; learning how to read & write is much more challenging than bitcoining - reading-writing schools are everywhere; all those people going to mindless worship churches on a Sunday cud go to a Sunday School of Lightning (SSL) instead;

In the bitcoin bubble that we're all in, it's easy to think that bitcoin self custody is easy. But for the vast majority of people, it's a real stretch. There's the new concepts and new tech, AND the fact that making a mistake can have serious consequences in terms of losing money. Yet it's not at all inherently too difficult. It just needs to be learned step-by-step, like you learned how to use a bank account, credit card, how to invest in the stock market, etc. That's why I wrote the book Bitcoin, Hands-On: 28 “learn-by-doing” exercises to master the basics of managing your own Bitcoin, including wallets, transactions, and self custody. And making wallet software easier and more intuitive is great. However one of the main concepts that needs to be understood in bitcoin is that you are NOT chained to your wallet software. You have your private key, you can use it wherever you want.

death of most early adopters

there's a reason jews consider the forearm tatoo folks worth talking to, and it is not self-custody of shoes.