Looking at Text::StripAccents source code, it seems quite inefficient: it splits the string in chars, loops over them replacing accented ones by their ASCII equivalent and then joins the string again.

A regular expresion substitution could do it:

my %table = ( 'À' => 'A', 'Á' => 'A', 'Â' => 'A', 'Ã' => 'A', 'Ä' => '
+A', 'Å' => 'A',
              'Ç' => 'C',
              'È' => 'E', 'É' => 'E', 'Ê' => 'E', 'Ë' => 'E',
              'Ì' => 'I', 'Í' => 'I', 'Î' => 'I', 'Ï' => 'I',
              'Ñ' => 'N',
              'Ò' => 'O', 'Ó' => 'O', 'Ô' => 'O', 'Õ' => 'O', 'Ö' => '
+O',
              'Ù' => 'U', 'Ú' => 'U', 'Û' => 'U', 'Ü' => 'U',
              'à' => 'a', 'á' => 'a', 'â' => 'a', 'ã' => 'a', 'ä' => '
+a', 'å' => 'a',
              'ç' => 'c',
              'è' => 'e', 'é' => 'e', 'ê' => 'e', 'ë' => 'e',
              'ì' => 'i', 'í' => 'i', 'î' => 'i', 'ï' => 'i',
              'ñ' => 'n',
              'ò' => 'o', 'ó' => 'o', 'ô' => 'o', 'õ' => 'o', 'ö' => '
+o',
              'ß' => 'ss',
              'ù' => 'u', 'ú' => 'u', 'û' => 'u', 'ü' => 'u',
              'ý' => 'y' );

sub strip_accents {
    my $str = shift;
    $str =~ s/([^\x00-\x7F])/$table{$1} || '?'/ge;
    $str
}
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It's so simple that it makes me think if a module is actually required...

And BTW, "unaccenting" chars is not a unique transformation, it depends on the text language. For instance, in German 'ü' should be mapped to 'ue' (see Lingua::DE::ASCII), but in Spanish it should be mapped to 'u'.