load it using keyb.com as mentioned in the documentation ?

I admittedly missed the documentation you pointed me to. Though I did google my heart out. The problem with where you pointed me to is simply that I cannot find any support for the colemak layout.

I searched the freedos source for the kl files mentioned. I looked at the list of keyboard layouts on this forum... not there.

if nobody has ever bothered to create a colemak layout for freedos, then you are out of luck.
Maybe use a more popular keyboard layout or create it yourself.

dosbox's keymapper may help

Apologies for resurrecting my own dead thread but after posting this here, I went and fiddled some more. FreeDOS and DosEMU etc. I then found that the actual layout was not supported in FreeDOS at all. After contacting the devs, and testing the layout, the layout is now included in the FreeDOS distribution for version 1.1.

My question now is if this layout will now be available in future releases of dosbox because now it's available in FreeDOS?

You can load their .kl files.

Yes I know that, I was asking if I should expect the layouts included with DosBOX to be updated upon next release since FreeDOS now has support for Colemak.

Very unlikely to happen.

I assume it'd be futile to ask why not, but thanks for the response.