Voiceover is saying underscore before each letter

Sounds like a critical issue that needs to be reported to accessibility@apple.com

Make sure screen recognition is not on.

This sounds like something that's most likely a temporary glitch.

If you haven't done so already, I would turn your device off and back on again and turn VoiceOver off and back on again.

Fingers crossed that either of these will flush the glitch.

I am using an iPhone 12 Pro with the latest version of IOS 15.3.
I have a partial work around. If you are texting or writing free form, use Braille Screen input. You can do this even when you want to dial a number. Just double tap the edit field in the phone app and enter the number with Braille Screen Input.
I will also report this bug to Apple accessibility.
Anyone have their email address.
Thanks, Jason
Hay, I do realize not everyone knows Braille Screen input.

Try using the pronunciation dictionary to have voiceover be silent when it encounters an underscore.

This issue has only started happening in the past couple of days. I’m running the latest iOS 15.3 beta on my iPhone 13 pro. I’m pretty sure I haven’t had any iOS updates for the last week so confused as to why it started now. It is doing it on the on-screen keyboard, when entering my pin code and it’s really frustrating. I will raise this with Apple as well

yeah it's happening he to me as well.
have to send an E-mail to
apple accessibility team.

Try to turn off caption panel

I tried...
but, it seems doesn't work.
even turn off the voice over and turn on again.

Hi.
I was experienceing the same issue.
I called Apple accessibility and they suggested this to me and this fixed it.

I have just noticed this problem in the last couple of days myself, however this morning I have updated my iPhone to the latest version of the software and it still made no difference. Any further help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone I have just turned off the caption panel in VoiceOver settings and that has resolve this problem I recommend everybody does the same cheers

I'm not having this problem at all. Am I the only one?

I too started out of nowhere having the same issue. It also says underscore when you type. It literally started when i was in the middle of typeing a search to search in the App store.After seeing this topic, i checked out under Voiceover Captions Panel and it was on. turned it off and that fixed the issue! i still have the 15.2.1 update. Now that is fixed updating to IOS 15.3. thanks guys!

You are not along. I have an iPhone 13 Pro and I haven't this issue.

Hello there everyone hope you are safe and well. I have found that if you swich the voice-over's voice to alex that will resolve the issue. and another option is to turn off the caption panol by quadruple tap. Thanks and have a great day!

Hi
This was happening to me as well and after turning off the caption panel as recommended by a couple of ppl on here I’m delighted to say it works I can’t thank you enough as it wasn’t making things easy for me

Thank you everyone that suggested turning off caption panel to stop the announcement of underscore when typing in the latest update as it has fixed the issue.

So grateful for this recommend. A BIG THANK YOU, it was driving me bonkers. This is what I learned:
- to get to 'caption panel' I had to go to Settings, then Accessibility, then Voiceover, then scroll down to Caption Panel to turn off by double-tapping on it.
- I could also get there by doing a two-finger quadruple-tap to get to Voiceover Quick Settings, then scroll down or flick down to Caption Panel and double-tap to turn it off.

I got the whole tapping gesture method from someone's earlier comment so went to four-finger double-tap to turn on Starting Help feature, which explains any gesture you demonstrate on the screen. The same gesture toggles this feature back off. Could I have accidentally toggled Caption Panel on? A possibility, but a quadruple two-finger tap is hard to do by accident.
I followed every recommendation until I found the one that worked. What a great community to be a part of! Your willingness to assist gave me the courage to finally register and join in the discussion. A lengthy intro comment, but did it for the benefit of other newbies like me. Ciao!

As others have suggested turning off the caption panel work for me

Thank you to the people who shared the fix for this issue. I don't know how you discovered it, but I am grateful that you did ☺️

Hi everyone. After turning off caption panel, besides the_issue, another problem of mine was solved, And that is Siri voice pronouncing numbers incorrectly.
I’m just curious, what is this Caption panel feature for? Can somebody kindly explain? Thank you in advance

I thank this post for giving me Apple’s accessibility email address.
I note the solutions is here, but someone wish to know what it is we’re turning off.
Once VoiceOver is enabled, a caption panel will appear in the bottom left corner of the screen. Within the panel, the text that VoiceOver speaks will be displayed. VoiceOver will speak and display descriptions of each element on the screen as you interact with them.
That is a basic description. To me it suggest it is a box or panel that is available if you have Voiceover on.
As to how useful it is on, that will require some research.
Much appreciated for the answer to get the fix.

I do have the same issue. So far, I have noticed it on the Ava voice, and not any other voices I currently have on my phone. Wonder if it is the same on the iPad. Actually, I looked in this thing, and found out There was something to do with the caption panel, so I decided to check it out on my own... It was on. I double tapped it to off, and that works. Thanks to whoever first suggested it. I originally had that caption panel on, not because I had vision, (I really don't), but wanted to know what would happen, if the textfrom the caption would actually be read word or letter by letter with VoiceOver.

I too have had to disable caption panel to get rid of this exceedingly annoying problem.
I had mine turned on to show people how voiceover works, and so anyone helping me out of a sticky spot could see what voiceover sees. I hope this is fixed soon so I can re-enable it.
It's a really handy support tool, not to mention an educational one for explaining how blind people can use an iPhone.

it's seems fixed ths issue after uptdated to 15.3.1

Hi all
Are use the caption panel extensively, as at least at present, it’s the only way to share VoiceOver output with others in zoom cloud meeting. I do demonstration for accessibility purposes, and I am trying to present to my audience how certain things read in webpages when using voice ovrer.
Currently as things stand, when sharing screen over zoom cloud meeting, The audience can only hear voiceover clicks and not the speech. I am told by Apple this is for security reasons. The only work around I could find was to turn on The caption panel so that cited users could read the voice over output.
I haven’t countered the problem Voice over speaks underlines before every letter when typing or when reading by character.
I as well can confirm that turning off the caption panel solves the issue for me while turning it back on the problem is back.
I guess this should definitely be fixed soon, I have reported it to Apple accessibility but got nothing back other than the standard response they send. So if you’re having this issue definitely try turning off the caption panel if it’s on.
Regards, Nic