How to conduct an Accent Sensitive search in MySql
If your searches on that field are always going to be accent-sensitive, then declare the collation of the field as utf8_bin (that'll compare for equality the utf8-encoded bytes) or use a language specific collation that distinguish between the accented and un-accented characters.
col_name varchar(10) collate utf8_binIf searches are normally accent-insensitive, but you want to make an exception for this search, try;
WHERE col_name = 'abád' collate utf8_bin
In my version (MySql 5.0), there is not available any utf8 charset collate for case insensitive, accent sensitive searches. The only accent sensitive collate for utf8 is utf8_bin. However it is also case sensitive.
My work around has been to use something like this:
SELECT * FROM `words` WHERE LOWER(column) = LOWER('aBád') COLLATE utf8_bin