keeping whitespace on form TEXT & TEXTAREA

I have a Woocommerce site where user requests are entered in TEXT & TEXTAREA boxes. When the spacebar is used, all but 1 space is removed but when I use ALT(0160) the spacing remains and is retained in the shopping cart. I need to either remap the keyboard spacebar ASCII 32 to ASCII ALT(0160) or programmatically convert the spacebar ASCII to ALT(0160). Any help?