I don't think it's anything to do with uint8_t being optional. It's because a char might have more than 8 bits.
On the other hand, the Standard should never have given character types special aliasing rules to begin with. Such rules would have been unnecessary if the Standard had noted that an access to an lvalue which is freshly visibly derived from another is an access to the lvalue from which it is derived. The question of whether a compiler recognizes a particular lvalue as "freshly visibly derived" from another is a Quality of Implementation issue outside the Standard's jurisdiction.