It does. The way it works is you can either type in the item-code if you know it, or you can type in search letters which will prompt a browse screen (which is again highly keyboard-friendly).
The way it happens in places with low number of SKUs (< 10k) is people who're new typically search a lot in the beginning, but over time, they'll learn the most frequently used item-codes without any deliberate learning. They also get really fast at the keyboard. This was my experience building DOS-based POS software for small supermarkets and grocery stores.
If there are a much larger number of SKUs, or if the item-codes are provided by the manufacturer (like in the automobile spare parts business with 16-digit alphanumeric item-codes), you have to key in them manually.
A paint store I built software for had a huge number of SKUs, but they were renowned for their customer experience. This was made possible by putting new employees through a training whose qualifying test is to key-in a bill of materials at a really fast pace. They also chunked item codes into well-defined easily-learnable categories. This was the grouping: [Manufacturer, Product, Packing, Color, Code]. There would be < 20 manufacturers, of which only 4 or 5 are frequently used. Same for product. Packing and Color were more of attributes, but were easily learnable and helped uniquely identify a product.