Cocos Creator: Create keyboard driven game menu?

Hello,
as I noted in my previous topic I am a blind developer. Since Cocos 2D seems to be well dead now I decidedt o continue with creator. I have an idea on how to implement Text To Speech features on Windows (for that I will create a separate topic). However now I wonder how to make a game menu that is controlled by keyboard. I read about UI components and such, however since i prefer to do all I can in code, how can I approach it? Need to make a scene, for example “MenuScene” and do all operations on a node?