Can you just force an Accent-Insensitive collation for the comparison? This is lots faster, easier, and more reliable than trying to "skin the string" yourself.
Brett: What they want is to convert any of (À, Á, Â, Ã, Ä, Å) into A. There are lots of letters, and some strange conversion rules. A collation change is easy, standard, and reliable.
-PatP