Use Unicode::Map8. This is a fragment of an article of mine (sorry, can't provide a direct link right now) that uses it:

use Unicode::Map8;
my $map = Unicode::Map8->new('ASCII')
print $map->to8($map->to16($wd->decode($my_utf8_string)));
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Note that using ASCII to do the conversion, will simply strip the accents. You can usa addpair() to provide translations. For instance, you can use a instead of á.

Best regards

-lem, but some call me fokat