I agree that swapping the goggles around is minor, but so is my suggested work-around.
The fact is that some people have gone to great lengths to put stuff in certain spots on their characters. If, for example, you ask a cleric to remove his/her Con Op goggles they end up losing a bunch of SP for nothing. You even acknowledged that you have at least one character that has his HP item in the boot slot.
I find your suggestion for a boot augment slot interesting though. That would certainly mitigate their effect on players.
I dislike the idea of planning a character around equipment. I recall a decent thread discussing that very topic some time ago actually. If anything it should be the other way around because the game is fluid and requires people to constantly re-evaluate their equipment. Since this equipment shuffle often involves a large grind I would disagree that it is easier than ever to allocate slots.
This is another interesting idea along the lines of Impact's reply. But again, you couldn't crunch the BoA onto something a particular character relies on all the time. Unless you never wanted to get haste again that is.