<SYSTEM_TASK:>
Solve the following problem using Python, implementing the functions described below, one line at a time
<END_TASK>
<USER_TASK:>
Description:
 def make_ascii(word):
 """ Converts unicode-specific characters to their equivalent ascii """

    if sys.version_info < (3, 0, 0):
        word = unicode(word)
    else:
        word = str(word)

    normalized = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', word)

    return normalized.encode('ascii', 'ignore').decode('utf-8')