Make a UITextView selectable but not editable?

Question

Hi,

I am implementing a custom keyboard in my app. The thing is, I want to make it selectable so I can use the selectedRange property to get where the cursor is at. However, the only way to allow the user to select text in a UITextView is to make it editable, which brings up the keyboard. Is there a way to hide the keyboard, or place a custom view on top of the keyboard?

Thanks in advance.