When a user has a viewer role, shouldn't that user be able to view the alerts list. I wouldn't expect the user to be able to edit anything there, but there should be view permissions right? I'm currently using 7.2.1 and when a user has a view role they are not able to see the alert icon on the left hand side of the screen.
Turns out this is the expected behavior for viewer role.
For someone to be able to view alerts you need at least an editor role.
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/permissions/organization_roles/