Since we're trying to buff a lot of melees, not hurt melees, I don't think nerfing Animated Shields in any way is a good plan, so long as they still count as wielding the shield as far as proficiency and armor check penalties and arcane spell failures go.
Now, I've already long ago proved that Sword and Board can be done pretty darn well (certainly, wielding a shield in your hand well is easy, it's harder to add in the sword because then you're both using a shield and two weapon fighting). So we don't want to go overboard. But a few more abilities that specificly work when you're holding the shield would be good. Mostly, this would be best as feats, since that makes Fighters good at it. And those feats should be helping fill a party role, so protecting the others or debilitating enemies, NOT making the wielder harder to hurt.
We've talked about it a few times. The best ideas were things like being able to give people behind you concealment/cover, various shield bash abilities, and a specific "Sword and Shield Style" feat that gave you useful abilities.
JaronK