My screen reader keeps misformatting parenthetical citations in my sociology paper—could these spacing errors trigger an academic integrity flag?

Short answer: No, technical formatting glitches from your assistive technology will not trigger an academic integrity flag or count as plagiarism. Academic integrity policies focus on whether you are giving proper credit for ideas and words, not on whether your software placed a parenthesis in the exact right spot due to a glitch. Your professor’s warning about "unauthorized attribution" is likely aimed at students who intentionally omit sources or misrepresent them, not at students whose accessibility tools are fighting them. You are doing the work; the tool is just being clumsy. I get why this feels terrifying, especially with a Monday deadline looming. It’s incredibly frustrating when the very tools meant to help you are creating new barriers, and it’s natural to worry that a simple spacing error might be misinterpreted as a serious ethical breach. Think of it like this: if you hand in a handwritten essay where a coffee stain slightly smudges a footnote, nobody accuses you of stealing the idea. They see the intent to cite. Your situation is similar. The software is just the "coffee stain" here. The core of academic honesty is your intent to attribute correctly, which you are clearly doing. The formatting is a mechanical issue, not a moral one. To handle this practically, don’t spend your last night manually fixing every single bracket if it’s causing you pain or exhaustion. Instead, write a brief, polite email to your professor right now. Explain that you use dictation and screen readers due to visual and motor impairments, and that the software is currently misplacing punctuation in citations. Ask if they can overlook minor formatting inconsistencies in the draft so you can focus on the sociological analysis, or if they’d prefer you submit a clean version with a note explaining the technical limitations. Most professors will appreciate the transparency and will likely waive the strict formatting penalty for this specific instance. You’ve got this, and your voice and ideas matter far more than a misplaced period.