TL;DR — For a large share of families, a smartphone isn't the convenient way to do things online — it's the only way. Per Pew, about a third of households earning under $30k rely on a phone with no home broadband, and roughly four in ten lower-income adults own no computer at all. So an enrollment form that assumes a computer, a printer, or a scanner doesn't just add friction for those families — it shuts them out entirely. Mobile-first enrollment isn't a nice-to-have; for a real slice of your community, it's the difference between applying and not being able to.

Here's something easy to miss when you build an enrollment form on a computer: a lot of your families don't have one.

The device gap is bigger than you think

According to the Pew Research Center's 2025 data, about 16% of U.S. adults are "smartphone-dependent" — they own a smartphone but have no home broadband. Among households earning under $30,000 a year, it's roughly a third. And around four in ten lower-income adults don't own a desktop or laptop at all. For a real share of the families you serve, a phone isn't the easy option. It's the only one.

For a phone-only family, "harder" becomes "impossible"

This is the part that's easy to underestimate. If a family has a laptop and a printer, an application that's awkward on mobile is just annoying — they'll grumble and get through it. If a family's only device is a phone, that same application isn't annoying. It's a wall.

Look at where the walls go up:

A form built for a big screen, not a thumb. Tiny fields, a layout that assumes a mouse, buttons you can't hit cleanly — all of it turns a five-minute task into an ordeal on a phone, if it can be finished at all.

"Print, sign, and scan," with no printer or scanner. That instruction quietly assumes home equipment a lot of families simply don't have. For them, it might as well read "do not apply."

Document uploads that only work from a desktop. If the upload step breaks on mobile, a phone-only family hits a dead end halfway through.

An account to create before they can even start. Every extra step — make an account, verify an email, remember a password — sheds the families with the least time and the least room for friction first.

None of this turns anyone away on purpose. But a family that can't finish your form on the only device they own is a family you simply never hear from.

Why this quietly costs you families

The loss is invisible. Nobody emails to say "your form didn't work on my phone, so we gave up." They just don't finish — and they're often families who were genuinely ready to enroll. You never see the ones you lost this way, which is exactly why it's worth going looking for them.

What mobile-first actually means

Not "the form technically loads on a phone." It means a parent can complete the entire thing — first field to submit — on a phone, in a few minutes, with no printer, no scanner, and no second device. It means the upload step works from a camera roll. It means as few accounts and steps as you can manage. The test is simple: pick up your phone and try to finish your own application, cold, the way a new family would.

That's the standard we built Lazarus's enrollment to meet: mobile-first, so a phone is genuinely enough. It isn't a convenience feature. For a real slice of your community, it's the difference between applying and being quietly turned away.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many families are really phone-only?

More than most schools assume. Per Pew, about a third of households earning under $30k rely on a smartphone with no home broadband, and roughly four in ten lower-income adults have no computer at all.

Isn't a form that "works on mobile" already enough?

Not always. Loading on a phone and being genuinely finishable on a phone are different things. If any step needs a printer, a scanner, or a desktop upload, a phone-only family still hits a wall.

What's the fastest way to check our own enrollment?

Finish it yourself on a phone, start to end — no laptop, no printer, no scanner. Wherever you have to reach for a computer is where families are getting stuck.

Do we still need a paper or in-person option?

Keeping one accessible path for families without reliable devices is always a safe call. But the goal is for the digital version to work for as many families as possible, phones included — so it widens the door rather than narrowing it.