Animate text tracking in Maya

Hello. I am a low-mid level maya user and I was really hoping someone might be able to help me out with a problem I'm having. I really need to animate the tracking of text over time, that is, the empty space between letters. This is quite commonplace in After Effects but I'm running into dead ends no matter where I look in Maya. As far as I can tell there is no option for leading, kerning or tracking in the text creation dialogue box. I'm not sure whether or not I could use a deformer?? Essentially I need to animate objects so that they are moving a correct distance in space that is proportionate to the other letters.

I hope this makes sense, I really need some help with this :-)

Thanks!