Dictation no longer works (but it used to)

Question

My colleague developed tendonitis and now needs dictation on her computer.  It was working fine for about a week, but now it no longer works for her.
We tested her microphone and it looks like it's working fine.
She's able to "activate" the dictation, in other words, when she double clicks "fn" she hears the beep, but the little microphone icon no longer pops up.  She's tried rebooting her computer and this didn't help.  She is connected to the internet, too.
She's using Mac OS X Yosemite v. 10.10.2
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Try setting a different shortcut and see if that works!!                                                                                                                                      By default, you press the Fn (Function) key twice to start or stop dictation. If you like, you can choose a different shortcut.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Dictation & Speech, then click Dictation.
Click the Shortcut pop-up menu, then choose a different shortcut.To create a shortcut that’s not in the list, choose Customize, then press the keys you want to use. For example, you could press Option-Z.