There is a human oriented version of base32 encoding, namely z-base-32. It would be nice to have it in the standard library.

RATIONALE

The rationale for base-32 encoding in RFC 3548 [1] is as written therein: "The
Base 32 encoding is designed to represent arbitrary sequences of octets in a
form that needs to be case insensitive but need not be humanly readable.".

The rationale for our encoding is different -- it is to represent arbitrary
sequences of octets in a form that is as convenient as possible for human
users to manipulate. In particular, z-base-32 was created in order to serve
the Mnet project [3], where 30-octet cryptographic values are encoded into
URIs for humans to manipulate. Anticipated uses of these URIs include cut-
and-paste, text editing (e.g. in HTML files), manual transcription via a
keyboard, manual transcription via pen-and-paper, vocal transcription over
phone or radio, etc.

The desiderata for such an encoding are:

• minimizing transcription errors -- e.g. the well-known problem of confusing
  0' with O'
• embedding into other structures -- e.g. search engines, structured or
  marked-up text, file systems, command shells
• brevity -- Shorter URLs are better than longer ones.
• ergonomics -- Human users (especially non-technical ones) should find the
  URIs as easy and pleasant as possible. The uglier the URI looks, the worse.

http://philzimmermann.com/docs/human-oriented-base-32-encoding.txt