iOS Keyboard to IR mapping

Is there any way to associate IR commands with the full iOS keyboard? My Xfinity remote uses T9 style text input (i.e. each number 2-9 is associated with three or four letters, 0 is space). The search function allows you to input any given number once (i.e. you don’t have to “cycle through” to get to a specific letter). It would be great if I could map the iOS keyboard to the 9 IR commands to make searching much faster from roomie. The built in guide is good for live tv, but doesn’t cover the on demand use case.