In 1968, Steinbach was hired at York University by Ian P. Howard as his first postdoctoral fellow, as a Research Associate and as a Special Lecturer.

Steinbach wrote a bi-monthly invited column in the Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology[12] called Cyclops: Update on progress in vision science, from 2005 to 2017.

While studying the ocular motor function of patients treated for strabismus, Steinbach found that pre and post-surgical measures of visual direction provided insights as to the sources of information of the position of the eyes in orbit used by the brain.

[16] He also examined visual direction and egocentre location in enucleated and strabismic children and adults and studied the cyclops effect.

In studying the central vision loss produced by diseases such as age-related macular degeneration his research had been directed toward the design of effective techniques to measure residual visual acuity[17] and improve reading.